Political Party Oppression in Venezuela
Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, took a movement for democratic reform away from the strong political parties into an authoritarian regime giving him power at the expense of all other government, business, and social actor. He was able to create an executive-branch-heavy state by rewriting the constitution to be the most heavily presidentialist constitution in modern Latin America. His control over the other government branches allows for Chavez to make decisions and allocate funds without approval from the legislation. There have been strong opposition groups in the country but they have been squeezed out of power in the legislature and in elections. Chavez was able to achieve this through the relationships between this decline in checks and balances between the executive and legislative branch, and then the clientelistic spending.
Clientelism allowed for Chavez to use social spending as a way to receive and ensure votes. Citizens fear that they will have their social programs taken away if they don’t show up to vote and don’t vote for the correct candidate. This also affects voters for the opposition because they may be scared to even show up to vote, giving Chavez an even higher margin of victory. This same tactic was used towards corporations. Government jobs and contracts were only given to supporters. This gives the impression that people who are loyal have the opportunity to gain while those who oppose will lose a lot. This case shows the effects on clientelism on the sanctity of democracy. It is important to look at what happened in Venezuela to ensure that it won’t happen again in other Latin American, or even European countries. “Those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it”. The best way to stop clientelism is allowing for legitimation of other branches of government to ensure checks and balances to the executive branch. Since Hugo Chavez’s death, Venezuela has the chance to recreate the constitution to take away ultimate power from the President.
Venezuela has had the chance to reform their government and the people have been trying. The mass protests about the lines to supermarkets, the president Maduro, and urban violence have continued since 2014. It isn’t that the people are supportive of their government and want to continue to support a president with nearly absolute power, but they apparently don’t have a choice. I think that without outside intervention (not by the US but by neighboring countries, who are currently turning a blind eye to the violent protests) it is going to be nearly impossible for the protests to succeed in their goals of ousting Maduro and fixing their broken system of government. Maduro is the former leader of a trade union and said that he supports peaceful protests and yet police action against protesters has continued and so has media censorship. Political change isn’t as easy as it seems in Venezuela.