With a few weeks before the regional and local elections scheduled for November 21, the Government of Nicolás Maduro has once again resorted to the use of political interdictions to block opponents and dissidents from the race, thus guaranteeing its hegemony in the regional and local governments.

During the phase of nominations, substitutions, and modifications of applications for the 2021 elections, a number of political leaders have not been able to formalize their nominations for regional and local government. This is the case of Richard Mardo (who claimed that his political interdiction expired in August 2018), Leocenis García, Eduardo Samán, and Daniel Ceballos. The situation was criticized by the rector of the National Electoral Council, Roberto Picón, who expressed on Twitter that the affected “were surprised by last-minute decisions that were not duly or timely notified.”

As if that were not enough, the Venezuelan justice system has endorsed the practice. Proof of this is the case of the former Minister of Commerce of the Hugo Chávez Government, Eduardo Samán, who on September 15 filed a suit against the National Electoral Council before the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) that would allow him to register his candidacy for Mayor of the Libertador municipality of the Capital District on behalf of the Communist Party of Venezuela. Despite the urgency of the matter, the Supreme Court has not responded and only referred the decision to the Constitutional Chamber through ruling 44 of September 17. The chamber has yet to rule on the issue.

Richard Mardo, who was expected to run for Mayor of the Girardot Municipality (Maracay), presented a legal resource to be allowed to register his candidacy but did not obtain a timely response from the Constitutional Chamber.

The same old story

Holding on to power is the government’s priority, and to achieve this objective, it modifies the rules of the game with the intention of minimizing any risk of losing an election. One of the preferred tools of the ruling party to achieve this goal is the figure of political interdiction, as previously denounced by Venezuelan NGO Acceso a la Justicia, given that this tactic allows the removal of any rival from the electoral contest.

Between 2002 and 2015 alone, the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic placed a political interdiction on 1,401 acting and former public officials. One of them is the former mayor of Chacao municipality, Leopoldo López, who could not run for the now-defunct Metropolitan Mayor’s Office of Caracas in 2008 or the 2012 presidential elections because he was sanctioned in 2005. Later, in 2017, the former governor of Miranda and two-time presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, also suffered the same fate, when the same measure was imposed on him.

Not only opponents of the Government have been placed under political interdiction but also dissidents of Chavismo such as General Miguel Rodríguez Torres, former Minister of the Interior (2013-2014) and former director of the Bolivarian Service of National Intelligence (Sebin), who was banned in 2018 from exercising any public office for a year after expressing his disagreement with the Maduro government. As a result, Torres went from being part of the executive cabinet to being a prisoner, and he has been behind bars for more than three years.

The most serious thing is that the figure of political interdiction, as a mechanism of political pressure and blackmail, gained even more ground in early 2021, when 28 members of the National Assembly elected in 2015 were sanctioned. Juan Guaidó, Julio Borges, Freddy Guevara, Juan Pablo Guanipa and Ismael García were some of them.

This way, the Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic, an organ under the absolute control of the ruling party since 2000, has become a fundamental piece of the electoral strategy of Chavismo because article 105 of the law that regulates it grants the Comptroller General of the Republic with the possibility of issuing interdictions to the exercise of public office for up to fifteen years. The application of this mechanism is a disproportionate administrative measure that prevents the people with political interdictions from fully exercising their political rights during that time.

Also, the aforementioned legal provision is in contradiction with the Constitution, which indicates in Articles 42 and 65 that the exercise of political rights can only be suspended by a conclusive court sentence in the cases determined by law. The provision is also divorced from Article 23.2 of the American Convention on Human Rights that recognizes the limitations to political rights based on a conviction issued by a competent judge in a criminal proceeding in which political interdiction is imposed as an accessory penalty.

In its decision on the political interdiction of Leopoldo López on November 20, 2015, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights determined that Article 105 of the Organic Law of Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic violated the Pact of San José because it refers to a restriction imposed by way of sanction rather than a “ conviction by a competent judge in a criminal trial”. None of these requirements were met since the body that imposed the sanctions is not a “competent judge”, there was no “conviction”, and the sanction was not the result of a “criminal trial” in which the judicial guarantees enshrined in Article 8 of the American Convention should have been observed.

The Costa Rica-based Court demanded that Venezuela eliminate this figure and allow those affected to participate in all electoral processes. None of the demands has been complied with. Furthermore, despite the international opinion, the Office of the Comptroller General has continued to impose these sanctions and the Electoral Council has validated the practice, thus preventing numerous applications for different positions of popular election.

The illegitimacy of the Comptroller’s Office

Based on the design of the Constitution, the current Comptroller General lacks legitimacy to carry out its functions since he was appointed on October 23, 2018, by the fraudulent National Constituent Assembly instead of by the National Assembly, as provided for in article 279. Therefore, his acts are null and void according to article 138, which states that “all usurped authority is ineffective and its acts are void.”

It should also be noted that since 2018 the Office of the Comptroller has not published a management report as required by Article 141 of the Constitution.

Undoubtedly, the lack of accountability aggravates the opacity that currently exists in the country regarding the use of political interdictions. This situation contravenes the constitutional right to information, which generates more uncertainty and, above all, embodies the denial of political pluralism.

How does it affect Venezuelans?

The abuse of the figure of political interdiction by the ruling party is another evidence of the perils of Chavista control over all public powers. This practice makes it clear that any attempt to promote a political change that puts the hegemony of Chavismo at risk can be annihilated, regardless of what the Constitution or international human rights treaties say.

The interdiction of politicians from the opposition and dissident Chavismo to run in the November elections deepens the doubts and suspicion about the transparency and suitability of the upcoming electoral process. However, it is expected that “a good part of the interdictions, almost all of them, will be solved” in the framework of the political negotiations between the Government and the opposition in México, as recently stated by opposition politician Henry Ramos Allup.

Translated by José Rafael Medina