The parliamentary elections in Venezuela have left various lessons that need to be underlined.  In the first place, contrary to all the brazen predictions of the right, the elections took place in perfect order, as did the previous ones.

There were no denouncements of any kind, except for the misplaced statements of three former Latin American presidents, who at four in the afternoon, two hours before the end of the voting, announced the winners of the election. Apart from that, the "Chavist dictatorship" demonstrated once again a transparency and honesty in the electoral act that many countries in and out of Latin America would do well to emulate, including the United States.

The recognition by President Nicolás Maduro as soon as the results of the election were public makes a favourable contrast to the attitude of the opposition, who in the past obstinately refused to recognize the verdict of the vote. The same must be said of Washington, that even today does not recognize the triumph of Maduro in 2013.  While some are truly democratic, others simply simulate.

Secondly, we should underline the importance of the fact that, after 17 years of Chavism, in the midst of extremely hard conditions prevailing in Venezuela, the official party can still count on the adhesion of forty per cent of the electorate in Parliamentary elections.

Thirdly, the results have shifted the ground of the opposition from their facile stances and frenetic denunciations, because now, having a comfortable parliamentary majority, they will share responsibility in the conduct of public affairs. Now the government will not be the only player responsible for the difficulties that affect the citizenry. This responsibility will, from now on, be shared.

Fourth and last, a deeper reflection. To what point can "free elections" be organized in the conditions existing in Venezuela?  In the United Kingdom there should have been elections in 1940. But the outbreak of the Second World War obliged them to be delayed until 1945.  The argument was that the chaos occasioned by the war prevented the electorate from exercising their freedom in a conscious and responsible way. The constant attacks of the Germans and the enormous difficulties of daily life, among them the difficulties in obtaining the elements necessary for it, affected the citizens in such a way that prevented them from exercising their rights in the full enjoyment of freedom.

Were the conditions under which the Venezuelan elections were celebrated that different?  Not entirely. There were many similarities. The White House had declared in March that Venezuela was "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and the foreign policy of the United States", the equivalent of a declaration of war against this South American nation.

On the other hand, Washington for many years had destined financial support for "empowering civil society" in Venezuela and to help in training a new political leadership, euphemisms intended to hide the plans of the hegemonic power to interfere and their desire to overthrow the Maduro government.

The persistent economic war launched by the empire, alongside their incessant diplomatic and media campaign, ended up eroding the loyalty of the social base of Chavism, leaving them exhausted but also furious at the years of planned shortage of goods and high prices and the increase in citizens' insecurity.

Under these conditions, to which we must certainly add gross errors in macroeconomic management by the authorities and the ravages produced by corruption that was never seriously combated by the government, it was obvious that last Sunday's election would end as it did.

Sadly, the "world order" inherited from the Second World War, that a recent document from Washington recognized has "very well served" US interests, has not been equally useful for protecting the countries of the periphery from the imperial power, from its shameless intervention and its sinister authoritarian projects.

Venezuela was the latest victim of this scandalous immorality of the present "world order" that observed unperturbed an unconventional aggression against a third country with the aim of overthrowing a government, demonized as an enemy.

If such a state of affairs continues to be accepted by the international community and its global governance bodies, what country could guarantee "free elections" for its citizens?  In the 1970s, the countries of advanced capitalism blocked an initiative proposed within the United Nations Organization that sought to define "international aggression" as something that went beyond armed intervention.

Reading the recent experience of the Chile of Allende, some countries attempted to promote a definition that would include economic and media warfare such as that launched against Bolivarian Venezuela, but they were defeated.

It is now time to revise this question if we hope for what is left of democracy to survive the counteroffensive of the empire, after what we have seen recently in Greece and last Sunday in Venezuela. If such practices cannot be eliminated from the international system, if we continue consenting to a powerful country shamelessly intervening with total impunity over another, then elections will simply become a trap that only serves to legitimate the reactionary projects of the United States and their regional lieutenants. It could even occur that many people come to think that perhaps other ways of acceding to and holding power might be more effective and reliable than elections.

- Dr. Atilio A. Boron is the Head Researcher of Conicet, Researcher with IEALC, the Institute of Studies of Latin America and the Caribbean, at the Faculty of Social Sciences of the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Director of PLED, Programa Latinoamericano de Educación a Distancia en Ciencias Sociales of the Centro Cultural de la Cooperación "Floreal Gorini".

www.centrocultural.coop/pled

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