Benigno Alarcón Deza: ‘Over 80% of Venezuelans are clamouring for political change’

Venezuelan political scientist Benigno Alarcón Deza, resident in Caracas, is a university professor and the founder of the Centro de Estudios Políticos y de Gobierno at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello.

In a feature interview, he analyses the collapse of the Venezuelan democratic cycle and the ambivalent impact of oil and the drift towards authoritarian government begun by Hugo Chávez. 

Alarcón Deza maintains that not recognising the result of the 2024 election tore up the last shred of the Nicolás Maduro régime’s legitimacy, opening up a sequence unfolding into the recent intervention of the United States. 

The analyst defends the leadership of opposition leader María Corina Machado, underlines her social support and affirms that Venezuelan society is not demanding a return to the past but a country where votes are respected and democracy becomes possible again.

 

Venezuela had, between 1958 and the end of the 20th century, one of the most extended cycles of civilian government with competitive elections in Latin America. How do you explain a relatively stable democratic experience ending up in an authoritarian régime?

The case of Venezuela is no different from the lost democracies of recent years, above all at the start of this century. And basically because, unlike in the past, democracy is not lost due to a coup d’état but from what normally happens in a situation from which no country is exempt – somebody with an autocratic mindset coming to power, almost always through an election, of which they take advantage to try and colonise all the state institutions. Bit by bit, they are constructing a system which can be conserved over time. This is basically what happened in 1998, when [Hugo] Chávez won the election after attempting a coup in 1992. As from 1999, he summoned a National Constituent Assembly to change the ground rules and state institutions. Taking advantage of his popularity at that time, he called new elections in a kind of refoundation of the Republic, which ended up being nothing more than basically taking control of all the state institutions and eliminating all the checks and balances proper to a democracy.

 

What happened to that political system emerging in 1958, with strong parties, agreements between the elites and oil money? With the concentration of power into the State, and also oil, did a distance develop between the leaderships and society, a loss of democratic legitimacy so that a person with an authoritarian mindset could reach power?

That's an excellent question and a debate we’ve been having for a long time. The political parties definitely ended up losing legitimacy for various reasons – some of them the fault of the parties themselves and others more structural. Venezuela passed from being a basically rural to an urban country thanks to the oil boom and a highly accelerated growth in a few years, leading to asymmetries in the population which grew very rapidly. We were left with a state without the capacity to somehow even out those differences a bit and to try and create opportunities for everybody. Not just through neglect but also in large measure because the growth was too fast and very messy so that at the end of the day there was no capacity to respond. This led to frustrations, resulting in a growth of a poor class basically concentrated into urban areas, seeking work, a better quality of life and opportunities often not open to everybody. This generated resentments, distancing the political leadership from the population and permitting a populist discourse promising things which could never be but ended up imposing itself. The situation grew much worse and I would call the year 1989 the turning-point when Carlos Andrés Pérez, recently returning to power, applied the austerity recipes of the International Monetary Fund, leading to important protests – mainly in the city of Caracas but not only there – which were forcibly repressed. This resulted in a great rupture between a Pérez government seeking the modernisation of the country and a population desperately seeking to be attended to close that gap between the middle class and the poor, which has not been closed then or now when poverty is much more accentuated than in the past.

 

Are there elements of that democratic experience over so many years, of that institutional stability Venezuela once had which could be recovered today or has the number of years passing by since then directly led to most of the population having no memory?

The reality is that the population does remember – some directly like we older people and others because of what they were told, the narrative of their parents and grandparents, or what they witnessed when very small so that they can see the contrast between the past and today. But there is a nostalgia for what Venezuela was and a desire to return to that Venezuela which, while not perfect, was better than what we are experiencing today, when it is important to say that over 80 percent of the population is clamouring for a political change. That has been statistically measured for a long time with the opinion polls stable in their results for several years now, including the most recent. And when they want a political change, we are not talking about going back to the past. What the people are demanding is a country with democracy where their votes are respected, something which failed to happen in 2024, and where people can somehow express themselves in liberty and without fear on any issue, above all politics. And that is not happening today. That is precisely why political change has such tremendous support nowadays, the hope of the people.

 

One might call not recognising the electoral result of 2024 a kind of turning-point, a moment when the Venezuelan régime lost its last source of legitimacy, activating a process leading to its collapse. Was that the stumbling-block or had the process already broken down beforehand?

That was the final straw but the process had already broken down beforehand, basically since the death of Chávez. The last election of Chávez in 2012 already came with an important reduction in support and although he won beyond all doubt, it was not the same as the 2006 election, for example and harder to win. 

When Chávez died in 2013 and the election won by [Nicolás] Maduro was called, it is important to remember that the result of that election was tremendously questioned and the opposition even requested an audit of the voting which the government roundly denied. Not to be but from what we know today, Maduro possibly lost that election and if he had won at all, by a tiny margin of one or two percent although an opposition win would have been by a similar margin. 

When we go on to the next election, the 2015 midterms, the ruling party lost scandalously, losing three-quarters of the National Assembly seats and giving the opposition a two-thirds majority which the government never recognised. Within a matter of hours they assembled the files to unseat the three or four deputies, if I remember correctly, making the difference between an absolute majority and a super-majority enabling an opposition Assembly to take decisions which could somehow end up derailing the government. 

And to crown it all, a short time afterwards, in mid-2017, if my memory does not fail me, the government ended up electing a National Constituent Assembly which never did anything to update the Constitution but which substituted the National Assembly in its functions, not permitting it to legislate. 

Afterwards we had in 2018 a presidential election when the opposition was not permitted to participate, basically by banning the country’s main political parties and their main candidates while permitting candidates who ran under opposition banners but were not recognisable as opposition to compete. And there was, of course, an enormous level of abstention in that electoral process. 

After 2018 we come to this 2024 election, handled in completely different terms. When these elections were called, the opposition was allowed to participate but not just anybody. María Corina Machado, who had just won her primary with 92 percent of the votes, was not permitted to be a candidate because the government did not want to run any risks. The candidate backed by María Corina Machado ended up more than doubling the government vote but the electoral result was not recognised with the government saying it had won, thus taking us up to the current state of affairs. 

So 2024, as you say, was an important turning-point, the last straw. But it is a process which has somehow been evolving since the death of Chávez in 2013.

 

Since the 2024 election was dominated by the ban on María Corina Machado, do you consider that new elections should be called or should Edmundo González Urrutia be accepted as president, on the basis of the electoral result of 2024?

That is a very good question and my impression is that it is being debated at more than one instance today. You can find arguments in favour of and against either of those two solutions. And the truth is that I do not want to go into it much because otherwise the answer will take up what remains of our programme. But you can find pros and cons for each of those positions. 

Personally, I’m inclined towards the solution recognising the government elected in 2024 without trying to run down the contrary for various reasons. Firstly, because that is what the people of Venezuela are demanding – there are many studies of public opinion concerning that and they call for respecting the popular will as expressed in the 2024 election. The second and very important reason is to permit a much faster political transition because if we are talking about a political transition, that must again pass through all the stages of an electoral process of naming new electoral authorities and establishing new ground rules and I have no doubt that the result would be similar but we are talking about postponing a process of transition to end up with something not very different from the 2024 election, just confirming the same results, so I don’t think that is what should happen. That is important for a process of political transition, which is always very fragile. 

I’d say, off the top of my head, that approximately half the processes of political transition end up being turned around. To take recent cases, we have Nicaragua, well known to everybody, Egypt in the Arab Spring and, more recently, Tunisia, which also overturned its process of political transition. If we seek to carry out a process of transition with a government lacking legitimacy, as the United States is trying to do at present, maintaining those who have ruled as an interim government, the possibility of this process of transition going into reverse or falling is extraordinarily high so that what you need to seek is to generate the conditions, as soon as possible, for a government with legitimacy to manage the process of transition, increasing the probabilities of that transition being successful.

 

There is an argument that runs that this is desirable but not possible because the régime has a volume of military resources which would immediately create a civil war so that the government elected in 2024 could not be imposed from outside. Does it seem plausible to you that what you say could be done?

Yes, absolutely. That is the argument of those who do not want a political change, that is the reality. It’s a fallacious argument, untrue for various reasons. 

Firstly, if we are going to make an issue of military institutions as an excuse, I might accept a military high command placed there for reasons of confidence and loyalty. So while I might possibly not be able to count on that military high command, it should be recalled for those friends listening to us who might not know that the Venezuelan military have only been able to vote as from the 1999 Constitution, the Constitution of Chávez and in the last presidential election in 2024, Edmundo González Urrutia, María Corina Machado’s alter ego who was elected president, was the winner in all the barracks. This means that the military do not necessarily think the same way as the military helm so that the pertinence of maintaining or replacing that military helm should be evaluated, which would surely imply processes of negotiation and amnesty in some cases, certain guarantees, as has happened in any country undergoing a political transition. But in reality I do not believe that the military as a corps or institution will adopt a position contrary to recognising the electoral results of 2024 and the legítimately elected government taking office. 

Then there is a lot of talk, also fallacious, of Colombian guerrilla groups setting up shop in Venezuela etc. etc. – the reality is that if the State controls the police system and the military institution, there is not much those groups can do to sabotage a legitimate government. And it should be recalled, because many people might not be aware of it, that the current support for Maduro or the government runs around 14 percent or up to 20 percent in the best of cases for them but 80 percent of the country thinks in a completely opposite way. So I believe that a democratic and legitimately elected government, and it is important to say so, can have conditions of governability. Evidently so if that government does things well. Saying that is much easier than doing it but if people make the right decisions and perform well, governability is perfectly feasible.

 

How much does public discussion in Venezuela permit conversations such as we are having? How far can the press intervene in its construction and how much fear, self-censorship and censorship is there in Venezuela today?

That is a very easy question. This interview between you and me could not have appeared in any Venezuelan media for many years now, not with me or with anybody. The media censor themselves because they know that their licences are at risk and that is not simply a threat. Many of the Venezuelan media have been closed down and the facts of the matter are that very few persons would dare to give an interview like I am giving you – above all if that interview gets to be seen in Venezuela. I have so dared, permanently. I am thankful for these windows of opportunity being opened because it is important to say these things but it is not risk-free to do so. What I can guarantee is nobody giving an interview of this nature in my country and many people who have plenty to say about economic, political and legal issues do not dare to do so precisely for fear of the consequences.

 

And could there be consequences for you from this interview?

Always possible but some risks must be taken in life because there are things which are more important and it might sound strange for me to say so but there are things more important than  personal safety. We owe it to our country and I think that at the end of the day, if we all stay mum and say nothing, then we will evidently end up losing our country.

 

When Donald Trump says: “Our oil was stolen from American companies so we want to keep the oil,” do you interpret that as more of a domestic discourse for the United States so that “America First” voters do not see him as diverting government resources and time towards interests which are not their own but his objective is not to control the oil for the gain of the United States but to control the oil money to weaken the system?

Yes, I see it that way. And I also think that there is a second layer to that interpretation. It is certainly true that several oil companies, and others too, were expropriated by the Chávez government with impunity and without paying any compensation, So possibly in this discourse of Trump, who often does not go into detail – intentionally so, I believe – there is mingled retaliation for those unjustified expropriations at that time. And on the other hand, he mixes in a discourse for a domestic audience which at the end of the day will be voting in favour of or against Trump and his candidates. 

I should also say that listening to Trump greatly confuses me at times because he says things which he ends up undoing with his actions. I don’t know if it’s a kind of dark humour or sarcasm. One worthwhile example would be the enormous contrast between the Trump of January 3 saying that María Corina Machado has no role in this process of transition because she has no domestic support, something which everybody in Venezuela knows not to be so, and the Trump inviting María Corina Machado to lunch to meet her personally and discuss these issues. I don’t believe that a President of the United States invites a woman to lunch with no support or legitimacy. So there are totally obvious  contradictions, things Trump says which not even Trump believes. 

There is something of this in the audacity of Trump these days, which some take as a joke and others very seriously, of placing in his social networks a photo of himself, in the style of those portraits hung in government offices, reading: “Donald Trump President of Venezuela.” So if we try to read Trump’s strategy via his narrative, we end up understanding absolutely nothing. If we try to understand the strategy by looking at the facts and possibly some statements of [US Secretary of State] Marco Rubio, then we can begin to have clearer clues as to where things are going, above all if we look at the facts rather than words.

 

As it happens, I was going to ask you about María Corina Machado and why you think Trump belittled her in that fashion, given the support she has within Venezuela, and what you think her future will be.

As I said, it is difficult to explain why he did that. I don’t know if at first Trump was seeking to ingratiate himself with the interim government, trying to tell [interim leader Delcy Rodriguez] that he would negotiate with her and come to an understanding. I don't know if that was his intention or something else. It is very difficult to read Trump, I confess, I don’t know if it’s because he’s American, but I have a hard time understanding Trump’s jokes and  contradictions. 

First he says one thing and then he not only receives María Corina Machado but also invites her to lunch in the White House. That is not a minor issue, it was not any old meeting or a 15-minute audience. I think there is something completely different there, a detail he did not even extend to [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy as far as I know. It’s an issue to which it is important to pay attention. 

María Corina Machado, with or without Trump, has a role in Venezuela beyond any doubt. The opinion polls have been saying so for years and, not to go too far back, we can take the results of the primary in October, 2023, which she won with 92 percent, making her the opposition leader par excellence. And if there is anybody who comes near her, which there is not, one could say that it is Edmundo González Urrutia for having won the election with her support. But if it is asked whether there is anybody else, the closest might possibly, and I’m not exaggerating, have a 10th of the support of María Corina Machado – it’s that big a difference. 

For now at least, because we do not know what will happen in the future, but things haven’t changed in years: the people have faith in María Corina Machado, possibly because she has been consistent, because she hasn’t given up, because she has faced the music permanently, because people think that what is happening in Venezuela right now is her work and people value the fact that when denied the electoral result, she did not grab a plane and leave the next day. People value that she stayed on fighting, and still more, that when she did leave, it was to receive the Nobel [Peace] Prize, remaining present with her appearance for the Nobel Prize and her appearance now in the White House and also, I understand, in the Senate. At the end of the day it is all an indicator that she continues in the struggle and that gives her a tremendous legitimacy. 

Meanwhile, other opposition leaders have taken a very pragmatic position of basically bending not to break and dealing with the government, which has permitted them the odd seat in the Assembly and the odd town hall but the people have ended up brutally rejecting them because they feel they have been betrayed, that these opposition leaders do not oppose but basically are playing for their own survival and keeping posts in state institutions, that they are not giving battle which gives them a tremendous loss of legitimacy.

 

Production: Sol Bacigalupo.