Jagdeo needs to avail himself of the facts

Feb 05, 2024 Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News – A local online report has indicated that Vice President, Bharrat Jagdeo, has said that he was not surprised that the government of Venezuela has violated the Barbados Agreement which sets out guidelines for free and fair elections.

Jagdeo was reported as saying that there were signs that this would happen and that the alleged violation did not come as a surprise to him and many others who had been observing what was going on in Venezuela.

If indeed, Jagdeo had been carefully monitoring developments in Venezuela, he would not have such an uninformed comment.

The agreement that was signed in Barbados was between the Maduro government and a group of Opposition parties which go under the umbrella of the Unitary Platform. The agreement recognizes the right of each political actor to choose their candidate for the presidential elections freely and in accordance with their internal mechanisms, “taking into account the provisions of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the law.”

The United States was not a party to the agreement, but it opted to incentivize the agreement by slacking the very sanctions which it had imposed on that country and which has contributed in no small measure to the deterioration in relations between the government and the Opposition.

The Supreme Court of Venezuela has since ruled to uphold the prohibition that was imposed by a constitutional agency (not the government) on the candidate of the main Opposition, barring her from participation in this year’s poll. In response, the Department of State of the USA has said that the arrest of members of the democratic opposition and the barring of candidates from competing in this year’s presidential election, are inconsistent with the agreements signed in Barbados last October. As such it is moving to scale back on its relaxation of the previous sanctions.

The barring of the main Opposition candidate is not an action of the Maduro government. It was the action of a constitutional agency, the Comptroller General, and has been upheld by a constitutional arm of the State, the Supreme Tribunal of Venezuela.  The ban was imposed because of the candidate, Maria Machado’s support for sanctions against Venezuela and for the self-proclaimed unofficial President Juan Guaido, and because her actions were said to have led to a loss of Venezuelan foreign assets.

Critics of the Maduro government have described the decision to bar Machado from participating in the elections as a form of “political persecution.”

The upholding of the ban by the country’s highest court has been wrongly interpreted as a violation of the Barbados Agreement since it places a hindrance on the right of Opposition parties to choose the candidate of their choice.  It appears however, that critics, including Jagdeo, have overlooked the text of the actual agreement which states that this right must take into account the provisions of the Constitution of Venezuela and the law. The supporters of the Maduro government will point to the fact that the ban on Machado was imposed under the laws of Venezuela and this decision was upheld by the country’s apex court.

Jagdeo and the international community have a right to determine that the decision upholding the ban was undemocratic and was not made by truly independent agencies. That is the prerogative of Jagdeo, Washington and its sidekick the Organization of American States (OAS). But it is not the same as saying that the decision was not made under and in accordance with the laws of Venezuela.

What Jagdeo and the Maduro’s critics are not pointing out is that as an extension to the Barbados Agreement, the government and the Opposition had set up a procedure to review disqualifications from the electoral process. In November last year both sides had announced that disqualified politicians could appeal their disqualification to the Supreme Court by December 15^th last year.

In fact, Machado utilized that mechanism to appeal her disqualification. She would have had to because there is no way she would have been allowed on the ballot without a legal overturning of her debarment. But now that the Supreme Court has ruled, her supporters seem to be overlooking the fact that the Court’s decision was as a result of an appeal she filed, thus endorsing the mechanism which had been established to review disqualifications.

Machado was not the only candidate whose ban was not lifted. The ban on a former presidential candidate, Henrique Capriles, was also upheld for his role in violent anti-government protests in 2017. However, other candidates who were banned had their debarment lifted, including Leocenis García, Daniel Ceballos, Pablo Pérez, Rosa Brandonisio and Richard Mardo.

Jagdeo therefore must understand the context of things before he makes wild pronouncements about the breach of the Barbados Agreement. He is free to conclude that there is political persecution of Machado but should not relate this to a breach of last year’s accords in Barbados which incidentally also involved an agreement in relation to Venezuela’s claims to Guyana’s territory.

 

 

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