Carlos Sánchez Berzaín
May 28, 2025

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) Twenty-First Century Socialism, or Castrochavism, that currently occupies Venezuela as part of a transnational organized crime group and uses State-terrorism, now commits more crimes with what it labels “legislative and regional elections.” It is nothing more than “vote-catching dictatorships applied in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia in which people vote but do not elect” because the criminal partnership between the regimes and the “functional” oppositions supplant the popular sovereignty with crime aimed against the peoples’ sovereign will.

For there to be elections there has to be democracy, because to elect is “to choose or prefer someone.” It is to opt for -while enjoying freedom as an essential component of each individual’s sovereign power- periodically delegating through a mandate to those elected, subject to the rule of law, the temporality of the position, and accountability for their actions as a minimum.

This is why all essential components of democracy -obligatory in the Americas- are; “respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms; access to power and its discharge subject to the rule of law; the conduct of periodic, free, and fair elections based on universal suffrage concepts and secrecy as an expression of the peoples’ sovereignty; the plural regime of political parties and organizations, and the separation and independence of all branches of the government.”

Venezuela is an occupied country since 10 January of 2025 a date in which Nicolas Maduro and the transnational criminal organization that operates under the banner of 21st Century Socialism, did not leave the government and failed to deliver it to the elected President of Venezuela Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia and the designated Vice President Maria Corina Machado.

The elections of 28 July of 2024 resulted in a resounding victory for Venezuelan peoples, for freedom, and to recover democracy. As anticipated, however, the response of defeated dictator Maduro and the transnational criminal organization he responds to, was to apply State-terrorism, kill, falsify, persecute, imprison, torture, and repeat the use of the whole spectrum of criminal instruments with which Cuba’s dictatorship subjects its people since over 65 years ago and that has expanded in this 21st century into Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia.

Nicolas Maduro, Diosdado Cabello, Vladimir Padrino Lopez, and the other component members of the “Los Soles Cartel” and diverse other activities of transnational organized crime that wield power in Venezuela, are only committing more crime. Venezuela has a President-Elect who, up to now, has decided to wait for the collapse of the criminal group before being sworn-in, but that does not give the usurpers any legality, or legitimacy. With each action; including their so-called legislative and regional elections, they commit more crime.

With the repeated application of its “vote-catching” methodology, this 25th of May, 21st Century Socialism pretends to legitimize its satellite dictatorship of Venezuela in order to continue using it as a narco-State, as a launching pad for conspiracy, as a threat against hemispheric and worldwide security. The regime intends to continue stealing its oil and wealth, and to continue using it as the operational base of operations for extra-continental dictatorships and more. The real effect of repeating crimes against humanity, however, is that their crime only accelerates the unavoidable collapse of this infamy.

In this situation of; occupation, usurpation, and subjection that the peoples from Venezuela suffer, the 24 Governors, 285 National Assembly representatives, and 520 Regional Legislators that may be elected, and all who present themselves as candidates, are also authors of the crime of attributing onto themselves the rights of the peoples, using material and ideological falsehood, using counterfeited instruments, supplantation of authority, high treason to the homeland, subjection to a foreign power, and more.

The candidates, those elected, the promoters, and all functional opposition members that are participating along with the usurpers of power, are guilty of being accomplices by affiliation with criminal narcotics’ trafficking, weapons trafficking, and terrorist groups. These are the positions of the jobs being performed by Maduro, Cabello, and Padrino Lopez and the reason why each of them have international warrants for their arrest with a bounty of $ 25 million dollars for the first two and $ 15 million dollars for Padrino.

The first obligation of democratic leaders, presidents, and Heads of State of democracies from the Americas and the world, is to separate politics from crime. Will it be that democratic countries, after the public commission of disguising crime as politics, the commission of other crimes, and the public affiliation with transnational organized crime that occupies and usurps in Venezuela, can continue receiving these people as political leaders in their territory?

*Lawyer & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas

Published in Spanish by infobae.com Sunday May 25, 2025