Venezuela's legislative National Assembly approves the Bolivar law to punish with unprecedented severity those who support or facilitate punitive measures against the country. Credit: AN

By Jorge Pastrán
WASHINGTON, Dec 18 2024 (IPS)

In Venezuela you can no longer say in public that the economic sanctions applied by the United States and other countries are appropriate, or even be suspected of considering any of the authorities illegitimate, because you can be sentenced to up to 30 years in prison and lose all your assets.

In late November, the ruling National Assembly passed the Simon Bolivar Organic Law (of superior rank) against the imperialist blockade and in defence of the Republic, the latest in a regulatory padlock closing civic space, according to human rights organisations.“We see a process of authoritarian learning. When we look at democratic setbacks, we see things that are repeated as patterns, such as the closure of civic space, of civil organisations, of journalism, of democratic political parties”: Carolina Jiménez Sandoval.

The powers of the Venezuelan state thus responded to United States’ and the European Union’s sanctions, and to the protests and denunciations of opponents and American and European governments, to the effect that a gigantic fraud was committed in the presidential election of 28 July this year.

The ruling Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed by the electoral and judicial powers as re-elected president for a third six-year term beginning on 10 January 2025, even though the opposition claims, by showing voting records, that it was their candidate Edmundo González who won, with at least 67% of the vote.

Speaking to IPS, several human rights defenders agreed that the country is following the example of Nicaragua, where laws and measures are driving hundreds of opponents into prison and exile, stripping them of their nationality and property, and suppressing critical voices by shutting down thousands of civil, religious and educational organisations.

“A red line has been crossed and the Nicaraguan path has been taken. Arbitrariness has been put in writing, in black and white, the repressive reality of the Venezuelan state, something even the military despots of the past did not do,” said lawyer Alí Daniels, director of the organisation Acceso a la Justicia, from Caracas.

The law adopted its long name as an indignant response to the US Bolivar Act, an acronym for Banning Operations and Leases with the Illegitimate Venezuelan Authoritarian Regime, designed to block most of that country’s business dealings with Venezuela.

The president of the non-governmental Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, observed that “the closer we get to 10 January, the day when whoever won the 28 July election must be sworn in, we see more and more laws meant to stifling civic space.”

Other laws along these lines include: one to punish behaviour or messages deemed to incite hatred; another “against fascism, neo-fascism and similar expressions”; a reform to promptly elect 30,000 justices of the peace; and a law to control non-governmental organisations.

Demonstration in Caracas demanding respect for human rights. Credit: Civilis

Mere suspicion is enough

The Venezuelan Bolivar act considers that sanctions and other restrictive measures against the country “constitute a crime against humanity”, and lists conduct and actions that put the nation and its population at risk.

These include promoting, requesting or supporting punitive measures by foreign states or corporations, and “disregarding the public powers legitimately established in the Republic, their acts or their authorities.”

Those who have at any time “promoted, instigated, requested, invoked, favoured, supported or participated in the adoption or execution of measures” deemed harmful to the population or the authorities, will be barred from running for elected office for up to 60 years.

Any person who “promotes, instigates, solicits, invokes, favours, facilitates, supports or participates in the adoption or execution of unilateral coercive measures” against the population or the powers in Venezuela will be punished with 25 to 30 years in prison and fines equivalent to between US$100,000 and one million.

In the case of media and digital platforms, the punishment will be a heavy fine and the closure or denial of permits to operate.

The law highlights the creation of “a register that will include the identification of natural and legal persons, national or foreign, with respect to whom there is good reason to consider that they are involved in any of the actions contrary to the values and inalienable rights of the state.”

This registry is created to “impose restrictive, temporary economic measures of an administrative nature, aimed at mitigating the damage that their actions cause against the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and its population.”

Daniels tells IPS that “this means that a mere suspicion on the part of an official, with good reason to believe that a sanction is supported, is sufficient for a preventive freezing of a person’s assets, prohibiting them from buying, selling or acting in a money-making business.”

“Without prior trial, by an official’s decision, without knowing where to appeal against the entry in that register, the person is stripped of means of livelihood. Civil death returns,” he added.

Archive image of a national meeting of human rights defenders. Credit: Civicus

Other laws

The “anti-hate law” – without defining what is meant by it – has since 2018 prosecuted protesters, journalists, firefighters, political activists and human rights defenders on charges of directing messages inciting hatred towards the authorities.

This year, the state endowed itself with a law to punish fascism and similar expressions, a broad arc because it considers that “racism, chauvinism, classism, moral conservatism, neoliberalism and misogyny are common features of this stance.”

It has also reformed the justice of the peace law to promote the popular election of 30,000 local judges, under criticism from human rights organisations that see the process as a mechanism for the control of communities by pro-government activists and the promotion of informing on neighbours.

And, while the Bolivar act was being passed, the law on the control of NGOs and similar organisations was published, which NGOs have labelled an “anti-society law”, as it contains provisions that easily nullify their capacity for action and their very existence.

The law establishes a new registry with some 30 requirements, which are difficult for NGOs to meet, but they can only operate if authorised by the government, which can suspend them from operating or sanction them with fines in amounts that in practice are confiscatory.

“I think the application of the Bolívar law is going to be very discretionary, and if Maduro is sworn in again on Jan. 10, civic space will be almost completely closed and the social and democratic leadership will have to work underground,” sociologist Rafael Uzcátegui, director of the Venezuelan Laboratorio de Paz, which operates in Caracas, told IPS.

The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and his wife and vice-president, Rosario Murillo, have taken measures against dissent that are models of authoritarianism in the region. Human rights activists believe that in countries such as Venezuela and El Salvador their strategies and norms are being replicated by those who seek to remain in power indefinitely. Credit: Presidency of Nicaragua

The Nicaraguan path

Daniels also argues that with the Bolívar law, the government “is going back 160 years, when the Venezuelan Constitution after the Federal War (1859-1863) abolished the death penalty and life sentences. A punishment that lasts 60 years in practice is in perpetuity, exceeding the average life expectancy of an adult in Venezuela.”

Along with this, “although without going to the Nicaraguan extreme of stripping the alleged culprits of their nationality, punishments are imposed that can turn people into civilian zombies, driven into exile. As in Nicaragua”.

For Jiménez Sandoval “there are similarities with Nicaragua, a harsh and consolidated case. It has cancelled the legal personality of more than 3,000 organisations, including humanitarian entities, national and international human rights organisations and universities, through the application of very strict laws.”

“In these cases… we see a process of authoritarian learning. When we look at democratic setbacks, we see things that are repeated as patterns, such as the closure of civic space, of civil organisations, of journalism, of democratic political parties,” she told IPS.

To achieve this, “they use different strategies, such as co-opting legislatures to make laws that allow them to imprison and silence those who think differently, to avoid any kind of criticism, because, at the end of the day, the ultimate goal of authoritarianism is to remain in power indefinitely”, concluded Jiménez Sandoval.

"Resistance and Popular Rebellion" reads a banner held by demonstrators in San Salvador in a Wednesday, Sept. 15 protest against measures they consider authoritarian adopted by the government of President Nayib Bukele. The latest was the replacement of the constitutional court judges by the ruling party, which paves the way for Bukele to seek immediate reelection, banned up to now in El Salvador. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN SALVADOR, Sep 17 2021 (IPS)

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has been widely criticised for his authoritarian tendencies, but has said that the changes he plans will be long-term – which to his critics means a further undercutting of the weak democratic institutions that he has already begun to dismantle.

The president gave the commemoration of the bicentennial of Central America’s independence on Wednesday, Sept. 15, a symbolic touch and pledged that his government would not reverse the changes put into motion.

“This country has suffered so much that it cannot be transformed overnight; important changes, real and worthwhile changes, take time, they are not immediate, they are made step by step”, said Bukele, in a nationwide address broadcast on radio and television on Wednesday night.

The opposition, however, sees the changes as an attack on democracy in this Central American nation of 6.7 million people.

Bukele for president in 2024?

Perhaps the most abrupt change pushed through by the Bukele administration since it took office in June 2019 was the removal of the five judges in the Supreme Court’s constitutional chamber.

They were removed on May 1 when the new legislature, controlled by the lawmakers of Nuevas Ideas, Bukele’s party – who now hold 56 of the 84 seats – was installed.

The governing party’s majority allowed the president to appoint like-minded judges to the constitutional chamber, whose first move was to strike down the legal obstacle to consecutive presidential reelection."Apparently we are in democracy, but the president's actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state's institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population." -- Loyda Robles

That opened the door for the president to run again at the end of his current five-year term, in 2024, which was prohibited by the constitution until just two weeks ago.

Bukele, a 40-year-old of Palestinian descent from a wealthy business family, first emerged in politics as a popular mayor of San Salvador from 2015 to 2018. He is described by observers as a millennial populist who uses social media to communicate with the public, often announcing his decisions via Twitter.

The constitutional chamber ruled that the country’s president can serve two consecutive terms in office, whereas according to a 2014 ruling by the same court a president could only run for office again after two terms served by other leaders, based on an interpretation of article 152 of the constitution.

But the new constitutional court judges named by the legislature on May 1 reinterpreted this controversial and confusing article of the constitution and ruled on Sept. 3 that presidents can stand for a consecutive term if they step down six months before the election.

The legal ruling, which drew fire from the opposition and global rights watchdogs, thus makes it possible for Bukele to seek a second term in 2024.

President Nayib Bukele gave a carefully staged speech to the country on the night of Sept. 15, addressing public authorities, as well as civilian and military representatives. CREDIT: Presidency of El Salvador

Manual for Latin American authoritarianism

The Salvadoran president is apparently following, virtually letter by letter, the manual used by other Latin American populist presidents with an authoritarian bent, whether on the right or the left, who, by means of rulings handed down by judges under their control, have overturned laws and perpetuated themselves in power.

“If the people grant power, and the people demand these changes, it would be no less than a betrayal not to make them,” the president said in his speech before civilian and military leaders.

The president now controls the three branches of government, with no checks against his style of government where everything revolves around him, a millennial who usually wears a backwards baseball cap and is intolerant of criticism, whether from the media, international organisations, the U.S. government or other countries.

On the morning of Wednesday Sept. 15, thousands of people marched through the streets of the Salvadoran capital to protest the president’s increasing authoritarianism, in the most massive demonstration against Bukele since he came to power.

“I’m marching to defend our rights and to protest against President Bukele’s abuses,” a trans woman who preferred to remain anonymous told IPS.

Bukele won a landslide victory in February 2019 as an anti-establishment candidate riding the wave of voter frustration and disappointment with the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), in power from 1989 to 2009, and the left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), which governed from 2009 to 2019.

Holding a sign reading “This government turned out to be more fake than my eyelashes,” a young trans woman participates in the march called by social organisations on Sept. 15 to protest against President Nayib Bukele and his style of government that, since June 2019, has been dismantling democratic institutions in this Central American nation. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

His party then swept the legislative elections in May 2021 and now, having replaced the members of the constitutional court, Bukele pulls the strings of an important segment of the country’s justice system.

He also controls the Attorney General’s Office, after the governing party’s legislative majority removed then Attorney General Raúl Melara on May 1, replacing him with the pro-Bukele Rodolfo Delgado.

“Apparently we are in democracy, but the president’s actions run counter to democracy, he is dismantling the state’s institutionality, and is thus attacking the rights of the entire population,” lawyer Loyda Robles, of the Foundation for Studies for the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.

She added that there were warning signs that El Salvador could be heading towards an even more authoritarian, dictatorial, Nicaragua-style regime.

The president of that country, Daniel Ortega, has already served three consecutive terms since his return to power in 2007, and is heading for a fourth term in 2022. To this end, the judiciary, under his control, has imprisoned almost a dozen opposition candidates who could challenge him at the polls.

Slippery slope of anti-democratic measures

Emboldened by his overwhelming triumph in the 2019 presidential elections, Bukele has taken a series of steps that have angered opposition sectors, because they believe that he intends to undermine all checks and balances and govern at will.

In addition to the removal of the constitutional court judges and the attorney general, the legislature passed a decree on Aug. 31 that forced some 200 judges to retire.

The government claims it is purging corrupt judges, who do exist. However, the process has not been based on investigations but on an across-the-board decision to make retirement mandatory for all judges over the age of 60 or who have worked for 30 years.

Some analysts have interpreted the move as a purge within the judicial system in order to later fill the vacuum with judges aligned with Bukelismo.

The government denies this charge and says the aim is to make way for young lawyers, arguing that judges in El Salvador do not hold lifetime positions.

But all of these moves have set off alarm bells both inside and outside El Salvador.

Demonstrators in Francisco Morazán square, in the historic center of San Salvador, who came out to protest on Sept. 15 against the increasingly authoritarian moves by Nayib Bukele’s government, in the most massive demonstration against the president since he came to power, called by social organisations on the country’s Independence Day. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

However, analyst Dagoberto Gutiérrez told IPS that the struggle between Bukele and his opponents is rooted in a silent struggle between two economic groups: the traditional oligarchy that has pulled the strings of the country’s politics, and new small, medium and even large businesspeople aligned with the president.

Gutiérrez, a former guerrilla commander now close to the president, said the opposition is demanding independence of powers that has actually never existed in the country, since the oligarchy always put in place officials who would maintain the status quo.

That “democracy” touted by the oligarchy, with its fallacies and abuses, is being taken up by another political project, that of Bukele, who stressed that the extent of the transformations he has planned “is yet to be seen.”

For the time being, according to the constitutional court’s recent ruling, Bukele can, if he wishes, seek reelection at the end of his current term. But he would not be able to run for a third consecutive term.

However, lawyer Tahnya Pastor remarked to IPS: “Who can assure us that in the future, by means of another legal precedent, they won’t pull another reelection out of their sleeve? This doubt remains, obviously.”

She added that when all the warning signs are analysed, “we can conclude that we are heading towards the ultimate concentration of power, and history has shown that no concentration of power is good.”

But like Gutiérrez, Pastor criticised the opposition because in the past they have also manipulated, for their own political interests, the same institutions over which they are now crying foul.

“The constitution has indeed been reformed in the past depending on the makeup of the constitutional court, and the jurisprudence has responded to partisan political interests,” she said.

Bukele seems to be confident that, despite the criticism, his policies and vision are welcomed by the majority of Salvadorans, who continue to support him.

According to a survey by the José Simeón Caña Central American University carried out in June, during Bukele’s second year in office, nine out of 10 respondents said the president represented a positive change for the country.

He obtained an overall high score of 8.1, and those surveyed identified the government’s good management of the Covid-19 pandemic as its main achievement.

Not everyone shares this enthusiasm for Bukele, obviously, nor does all the criticism come from academic, political or activist circles.

“It’s not good for someone to govern as he pleases, that’s how things were done when there were kings, but we are no longer in those times,” Hernán Campos, a farmer from the Cangrejera canton in the municipality and department of La Libertad, in the central part of the country, told IPS.

Egyptian army units block a road in Cairo, Feb. 6, 2011. Credit: IPS/Mohammed Omer

By Emile Nakhleh
WASHINGTON, Dec 3 2014 (IPS)

The acquittal of former Egyptian President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak is not a legal or political surprise. Yet it carries serious ramifications for Arab autocrats who are leading the counterrevolutionary charge, as well as the United States.

The court’s decision, announced Nov. 29 in Cairo, was the last nail in the coffin of the so-called Arab Spring and the Arab upheavals for justice, dignity, and freedom that rocked Egypt and other Arab countries in 2011.If the United States is interested in containing the growth of terrorism in the region, it must ultimately focus on the economic, political, and social root causes that push young Muslim Arabs towards violent extremism.

Chief Judge Mahmud Kamel al-Rashidi, who read the acquittal decision, and his fellow judges on the panel are holdover from the Mubarak era.

The Egyptian judiciary, the Sisi military junta, and the pliant Egyptian media provided the backdrop to the court’s ruling, which indicates how a popular revolution can topple a dictator but not the regime’s entrenched levers of power.

Indeed, no serious observer of Egypt would have been surprised by the decision to acquit Mubarak and his cronies of the charges of killing dozens of peaceful demonstrators at Tahrir Square in January 2011.

Arab autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere have worked feverishly to stamp out all vestiges of the 2011 revolutions. They have used bloody sectarianism and the threat of terrorism to delegitimise popular protests and discredit demands for genuine political reform.

The acquittal put a legal imprimatur on the dictator of Egypt’s campaign to re-write history.

Following the 2013 coupe that toppled President Mohamed Morsi, who is still in jail facing various trumped up charges, Arab dictators cheered on former Field Marshall and current President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, lavishing him with billions of dollars. They parodied his narrative against the voices—secularists and Islamists alike—who cried out for good governance.

Regardless of how weak or solid the prosecution’s case against Mubarak was, the court’s ruling was not about law or legal arguments—from day one it was about politics and counter-revolution.

The unsurprising decision does, however, offer several critical lessons for the region and for the United States.

Removing a dictator is easier than dismantling his regime

Arab authoritarian regimes, whether dynasties or presidential republics, have perfected the art of survival, cronyism, systemic corruption, and control of potential opponents. They have used Islam for their cynical ends, urged the security service to silence the opposition, and encouraged the pliant media to articulate the regime’s narrative.

In order to control the “deep state” regime, Arab dictators in Egypt and elsewhere have created a pro-regime judiciary, dependable and well-financed military and security services, a compliant parliament, a responsive council of ministers, and supple and controlled media.

Autocrats have also ensured crucial loyalty through patronage and threats of retribution; influential elements within the regime see their power and influence as directly linked to the dictator.

The survival of both the dictator and the regime is predicated on the deeply held assumption that power-sharing with the public is detrimental to the regime and anathema to the country’s stability. This assumption has driven politics in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and several other countries since the beginning of the Arab Spring.

In anticipating popular anger about the acquittal decision, Judge Rashidi had the temerity to publicly claim that the decision “had nothing to do with politics.” In reality, however, the decision had everything to do with a pre-ordained decision on the part of the Sisi regime to turn the page on the January 25 revolution.

Dictatorship is a risky form of governance

Authoritarian regimes across the Arab world are expected to welcome Mubarak’s acquittal and the Sisi regime’s decision to move away from the pro-democracy demands that rocked Egypt in January 2011.

Bahrain’s King Hamad, for example, called Mubarak the day the decision was announced to congratulate him, according to the official news agency of the Gulf Arab island nation.

The New York Times has also reported that the Sisi regime is confident that because of the growing disinterest in demonstrations and instability, absolving Mubarak would not rile up the Egyptian public.

If the Sisi regime’s reading of the public mood proves accurate, Arab autocrats would indeed welcome the Egyptian ruling with open arms, believing that popular protests on behalf of democracy and human rights would be, in the words of the Arabic proverb, like a “summer cloud that will soon dissipate.”

However, most students of the region believe Arab dictators’ support of the Sisi regime is shortsighted and devoid of any strategic assessment of the region.

Many regional experts also believe that popular frustration with regime intransigence and repression would lead to radicalisation and increased terrorism.

The rise of Islamic State (ISIS or IS) is the latest example of how popular frustration, especially among Sunni Muslims, could drive a terrorist organization.

This phenomenon sadly has become all too apparent in Egypt, Bahrain, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, Algeria, and elsewhere. In response to popular resistance, however, the regimes in these countries have simply applied more repression and destruction.

Indeed, Sisi and other Arab autocrats have yet to learn the crucial lesson of the Arab Spring: People cannot be forced to kneel forever.

Blowback from decades of misguided U.S. regional policies

Focused on Sisi’s policies toward his people, Arab autocrats seem less attentive to Washington’s policies in the region than they have been at any time in recent decades.

They judge American regional policies as rudderless and preoccupied with tactical developments.

Arab regimes and publics have heard lofty American speeches in support of democratic values and human rights, and then seen US politicians coddle dictators.

Time after time, autocrats in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and Syria have also seen Washington’s tactical policies in the region trump American national values, resulting in less respect for the United States.

Yet while Mubarak’s acquittal might soon fade from the front pages of the Egyptian media, the Arab peoples’ struggle for human rights, bread, dignity, and democracy will continue.

Sisi believes the US still views his country as a critical ally in the region, especially because of its peace treaty with Israel, and therefore would not cut its military aid to Egypt despite its egregious human rights record. Based on this belief, Egypt continues to ignore the consequences of its own destructive policies.

Now might be the right time, however, for Washington to reexamine its own position toward Egypt and reassert its support for human rights and democratic transitions in the Arab world.

If the United States is interested in containing the growth of terrorism in the region, it must ultimately focus on the economic, political, and social root causes that push young Muslim Arabs towards violent extremism.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS-Inter Press Service.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

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