I’ve read the major right wing parties (Democratic Action, Justice First, New Time, Project Venezuela, and the Social Christian Party) in Venezuela all officially boycotted the recent elections (although many candidates from these parties still ran). The results were the Fifth Republic Movement (incumbent Hugo Chavez’ party) gained huge majorities and other left wing parties (the Democratic Left Party, Movement Towards Socialism, and the Red Flag Party) picked up most of the remaining seats.
Now I’ve heard a few theories about why the right boycotted the election. One was that they didn’t trust the Fifth Republic Movement to run an honest election. But refusing to oppose them guaranteed their victory, regardless of whether the elction was honest or fixed. Another theory I’ve heard is that the right wing parties knew they were going to lose so they boycotted the elections so they could claim the left wing victory was just due to a technicality rather than a real mandate. And Fifth Republic leaders have said that the right wing parties were pressured into the boycott by the US government in order to discredit the Venezuelan government.
But what did the right wing parties hope to gain by the boycott? Even if they were convinced the Fifth Republic Movement was going to cheat, shouldn’t they have gone through with the election and forced their hand? Then they might have at least been able to gather evidence of the cheating. Instead by boycotting the election, the right wing allowed the left wing to win an honest election by default (assuming they wouldn’t have done so anyway).
Since the right wing parties figured that President Chavez was going to fix the election anyway, even if they ran, they were guaranteed to lose, and by participating, that gives legitimacy to Chavez’s government.
Basically, they were saying, “We choose not to participate in a sham election.”
I’m really disappointed in you Captain Amazing, The elections are still monitored by other countries, the right wing parties were thoroughly discredited by the lies and the attempt at claiming fraud in the previous contests (even their polling efforts were geared to mislead the foreign press into justifying a violent move against Chavez) in the last referendum even when no observers found evidence of it.
I posted this before:
The last referendum showed to be a disaster to the opposition, in the sense that we saw the opposition resorting to lies and distortions; and even when the referendum demonstrated the real support they had, they tried to manipulate the media outside Venezuela to then justify a violent move against Chavez, last time the Independent in the UK and some other extreme right sites did accept the now confirmed fake exit polling results from the opposition. It now becomes clear that the opposition has little chance of winning now and that they will go all the way with their assumption that the election will be once again a fraud, since the opposition still claims the last referendum results were.
IOW: For the opposition it is better to claim fraud than confirming the real support that they have from the Venezuelan people, my big complaint to the opposition is that they are idiots, running against Chavez with a sensible alternative platform, even in a losing effort will plant the seeds to eventually take over when Chavez is no longer trusted by the people, the solution the opposition is implying with this move is the path of the coup d’état.
So they got the election comitee to move the goal posts for them and then they took the football and did go home. Guys, if reliable evidence of a fraud had been produced on the last election and referendum then the world would see this as a justifiable boycott, instead of being dignified losers you are pathetic losers, and the only thing I see the opposition embrace is the way of the gun to get their way. Problem is, the people are armed too, so good luck with that.
But it seems to me that the right wing parties made a mistake. If they (or their American puppet masters if you prefer that explanation) honestly believed that the incumbent government was going to rig the elections, they should have still gone through with it. Then they should have monitored the elections, gathered any evidence of fraud they found, and used international support to call for new elections.
Instead by boycotting, they allowed the incumbents to put away their supposed phoney ballots and faked voting tallies and run an honest election, secure in the knowledge that they were going to win now by being the only party running.
Whether the election would have been fraudulent or not is irrelevant to whether or not the right wing parties believe it would have been, and certainly the right wing doesn’t trust Chavez, believing he relies on strong-arm tactics against the opposition and handouts to the poor in exchange for their support.
They are entitled to their beliefs but not the facts, since the facts did go against them in the last elections and the referendum, their beliefs do show only people capable to delude themselves and their followers. I do think Chavez in the long run is not good for Venezuela, but right now he is beating the alternatives. If the right-wing leaders cannot overcome those misleading beliefs, they will remain a sideshow from now on.