Venezuela must step back before democracy is lost

Venezuela’s economy has effectively collapsed, and the government of President Nicolas Maduro seems determined to destroy what remains of the country’s democratic institutions as well.

Barely 24 hours after the government won a rigged election giving it the power to rewrite the constitution and override parliament, security police arrested two leading opposition figures. As the government’s critics had feared, the slide toward dictatorship is well underway.

This is a tragic, self-inflicted wound. Venezuela has gone from Latin America’s most prosperous country to an economic basket-case. Plummeting oil prices are the main cause, but spectacular financial mismanagement by the self-proclaimed “Bolivarian” government has made a bad situation much worse. The economy has shrunk by a shocking 35 per cent in four years; inflation is spiraling towards 1,000 per cent; crime and corruption are rampant; people are desperate.

The economic and political crisis is, first and foremost, a disaster for Venezuela and its 31 million people. Street fighting has claimed 120 lives since April, and some are even warning of civil war. But it holds lessons for others, as well.

Most obviously, it shows that democracy can be lost, bit by bit, if governments keep subverting the independence of a country’s institutions. It has already happened in Turkey and parts of Europe, and there are, of course, worrying signs even in Donald Trump’s United States. Democracy does not come with built-in guarantees.

In Venezuela the assault on free institutions began under Maduro’s charismatic, populist predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who attacked the independent media and politicized the courts in the name of tipping the balance of power in favour of the poor. But it has become much worse under the current president, who lacks Chavez’s political touch and has been forced to grapple with a much more challenging economic situation after oil prices plunged in 2014.

In the face of that Maduro has resorted to evertougher measures, culminating in this week’s plebiscite, which was boycotted by the country’s opposition. It elected a new ‘national constituent assembly’ packed with Maduro’s supporters that can, potentially, gut the power of the existing parliament and give the president what amounts to autocratic powers.

Canada is right to condemn this slide towards dictatorship, as Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland did by calling Sunday’s vote “another step towards institutionalizing authoritarian rule in Venezuela.” And it is certainly right to call out the Maduro government for jailing two outspoken opposition figures, Leopoldo Lopez and Antonio Ledezma.

Yet Canada is also right to stop short of invoking its own sanctions against the Maduro government, as Washington did this week. Sanctions risk making things even worse for ordinary Venezuelans, who face shortages of medicine and even food.

Just as bad, they feed the suspicion among nationalist Venezuelans that their country’s woes are caused by American hostility and economic sabotage, rather than bungling by their own government. Chavez played the anti-American card brilliantly to maintain popularity among voters; Maduro is less skilled and his mistakes are more obvious, but ham-fisted action by the Trump administration could easily play into his hands.

It would be much wiser at this stage to work with like-minded countries through such multilateral bodies as the Organization of American States (OAS). Venezuela’s neighbours are worried about civil unrest in Venezuela turning into much more serious conflict if opposition forces are totally excluded from power. That could lead to a flood of refugees, creating a wider regional crisis.

To head off such a disaster, 13 member states of the OAS (including Canada) are pressing Maduro to step back from the brink, release jailed opposition leaders, and put a hold on going ahead with the new constituent assembly and all that implies.

Those are reasonable steps that would at least prevent the crisis from becoming even worse. Venezuela is racing toward economic ruin and political disaster. It needs to pause before it passes the point of no return.

(This editorial was printed in the Toronto Star Aug. 2 and distributed by The Canadian Press.)