On Monday, leaders in Canada and the United States upheld the principle that democracy depends on the acceptance of defeat. That ideal now faces a more vigorous test in Venezuela.
Nicolás Maduro, who has ruled the South American country with an iron hand since 2013, intends to take the presidential oath Friday. He says he won the right to a third term in elections last July – and while he has refused to provide official ballot results, he has asserted that claim with brutal force.
Backed by loyal judges and generals, the regime has imprisoned roughly 2,400 Venezuelans, marking a single-year increase of politically motivated incarcerations of roughly 750%, according to the Caracas-based organization Foro Penal. Many were peaceful protesters. Some are adolescents. At least two dozen people have died in violent crackdowns by security forces.
While Mr. Maduro resorts to hard tactics, his opponents – some hounded into hiding, others into exile – are marshaling the weapons of a softer power. In recent days, Edmundo González Urrutia, seen internationally as the legitimate president-elect, has been traveling across the region, meeting leaders from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Washington.
More significant was his appeal Sunday to the one institution he sees as vital to restoring democracy to Venezuela. “Our national armed force is called upon to be a guarantee of sovereignty and respect to the people’s will,” he said in a message to the armed forces posted on Facebook.
Rather than vilify the military, however, he sought – as its prospective commander in chief – to coax its higher principles through common purpose. “It is our duty to act with honor, merit and conscience, guided by the values that unite us as a fundamental institution of the Republic,” he said.
That message underscores that democracy finds its strength in respecting opponents and exercising power with restraint. “A democracy stays alive only by grace of democratic ways of doing things,” noted Mark Bovens, emeritus professor of public administration at the Utrecht University School of Governance in the Netherlands, in a talk last year. “Many of these ways of doing things are not formally defined anywhere.”
Forced to take refuge in Spain in September, Mr. González vows to return home in time be sworn in Friday – even if he has to stage his own parallel inauguration ceremony and in spite of a bounty Mr. Maduro has tied to his immediate arrest. Together with María Corina Machado, a hugely popular opposition leader banned from running in the July election, Mr. González has called on Venezuelans to fill the streets in peaceful protest.
Mr. Maduro has the security forces on standby. “All the regime has left is fear,” Ms. Machado told Agence France-Presse, adding, “In the end, the only way to be free is to overcome fear.”