Mark Mellman: Rights and wrongs in Venezuela

On Saturday night, the International Association of Political Consultants bestowed its highest honor, the Democracy Medal, on a man serving a 14-year prison sentence.

No, it was not confirmation that real consultants share the warped view expressed by Sandra Bullock’s character in “Our Brand is Crisis”: “There is only one wrong in this and that is losing.”

{mosads}Quite the contrary. 

Educated at Ohio’s Kenyon College and Harvard’s Kennedy School, Leopoldo López was twice elected mayor of Chacao (part of Caracas) and twice won first-prize from Transparency International for running the country’s most honest and efficient municipal administration. 

In 2008, López, who enjoyed an enviable 92 percent approval rating, was one of hundreds barred from running for office by Hugo Chávez’s regime, allegedly for corruption, although neither he, nor the others, had ever been charged with, tried for or convicted of any such offense.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found unanimously that López should be permitted to run.

By 2014, Chávez had died and passed the torch of dictatorship to Nicolás Maduro. 

López called for peaceful protests against the government. 

That very day, the government issued a warrant for López’s arrest on charges of instigating delinquency, public intimidation, arson of a public building, damage to public property, severe injury, incitement to riot, homicide and terrorism.

At a mass demonstration a few days later, López reiterated his call for peaceful protest and non-violence and turned himself over to authorities, saying his only other alternative would have been exile, which he regarded as unacceptable.

In a show trial, later denounced by one of the prosecutors who handled the case for the government, just one of López’s 63 witnesses was permitted to testify, while more than a hundred pro-government witnesses took the stand.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch declared him a “prisoner of conscience.” The United Nations, the European Union and Socialist International (Venezuela’s pseudo-leftist dictatorship accused López of being a “rightist”) have all protested his torture and demanded his release.

Meanwhile, the country’s situation deteriorated from crisis to catastrophe. Inflation is running at 159 percent and everything from food to toilet paper to condoms is in short supply.

Citizens are only permitted to make purchases once a week. Because of the shortages, people began to line up at stores in the middle of the night — until the practice was outlawed by the regime, which took to jailing those who arrived at retail outlets before opening time.

Acquiring the bare essentials takes nearly nine-times the minimum wage. Condoms run the equivalent of $755 (that’s right, dollars). Healthcare is largely unavailable. 

Venezuela’s murder rate is 10-times the global average, and an estimated 90 percent of murders go unpunished.

In a few weeks, in the midst of this chaos, elections to the National Assembly will be held. It doesn’t take an experienced pollster to recognize that the party in power is in trouble.

In the 12 public polls taken since September, the governing party has averaged 26 percent of the vote. Not one survey has shown it winning. 

Of course, one advantage of dictatorship is that election results are not necessarily dispositive. President Maduro already declared that, should his party lose (and we may never know the real vote count), he will continue to rule in a “civilian military union” to “protect the revolution,” presumably against his own people.

On Dec. 6 and the days thereafter, the whole world should be watching and taking a cue from the International Association of Political Consultants, demanding that the democracy be restored, and that Leopoldo López be released from prison. 

While, like Bullock’s character, we hate to lose, those of us who work in politics know well it’s far from the only wrong and far less important than the fate of the democracy we cherish and the human rights we promote.

Mellman is president of The Mellman Group and has worked for Democratic candidates and causes since 1982. Current clients include the minority leader of the Senate and the Democratic whip in the House.