By: Ricardo Abud
In the Venezuelan political landscape, the parliamentary and regional elections of May 25th have left a bitter taste that transcends numbers and statistics. Amid the noise, discouragement, abstention, and propaganda, a bitter truth remains: political space that is not occupied is surrendered. History waits for nothing. And while some vote, others resign.
What remains after this election day are not just the results, but the painful evidence of a historical contradiction that has defined the political destiny of a nation: the self-destruction of the opposition through abstention, that systematic denial that has become the power's best tool for perpetuating itself. In every historical struggle, there are crucial moments that define not only the future of a country, but also the political consciousness of its people. The cause is clear: a fascist opposition that for years has oscillated between internal fracture and emotional disconnection from the real country. The consequence is brutal: Chavismo, under the acronym of the PSUV, consolidates absolute power that is not built solely from Miraflores, but also from the mayoralties, legislative councils, governorships, and regional circuits, some of which, and surely the rest, have been handed over on a silver platter by those who call for abstentionism, as if politics were a matter of moral purity and not a correlation of forces.
Venezuelan political dialectics have become so perverted that cause is confused with effect, where those who cry out for democracy are precisely those who weaken it with their absence. It's a cruel paradox that needs to be unraveled from its deepest roots, because it explains why a country that cries out for change remains trapped in the same power dynamics it claims to reject.
When we analyze the struggle of opposites in the Venezuelan context, we find a fundamental distortion: a fascist opposition, which should represent the antithesis of the government, has become its perfect complement. The government needs a weak, fractured, and absent opposition to legitimize itself, and the opposition, in its abstentionist strategy, has given it exactly that. It is the denial of denial taken to its most perverse expression, where the attempt to deny the government through electoral rejection ends up denying the very possibility of a political alternative. The struggle of opposites in Venezuela is not only between government and opposition, but within the opposition itself: between those who believe the path is to gain ground, to keep the flame of democratic participation alive, and those, from a pedestal of intransigence, see every election as a farce, every vote as a betrayal, every attempt at democratic coexistence as a surrender.
Abstention is not just a failed political strategy; it is the manifestation of a mentality that has confused ideological purity with political effectiveness. In countries under authoritarian regimes, the masses clamor for elections, for spaces for participation, for the opportunity to express their political will. But in Venezuela, sectors of the opposition have inverted this historical logic, turning the right to vote into a tool of protest that only benefits those who seek to fight. Under authoritarian regimes, people beg for an institutional channel that allows social conflicts to be expressed and resolved without bloodshed. In Venezuela, the opposite occurs: when elections finally take place, a sector of the opposition calls for people not to vote. It denies itself. It denies the possibility of building a balance of power from below. It denies recent history, where every space conquered has been a focus of resistance, expression, and construction.
The negation of negation, that dialectical principle that propels history forward, is reversed here: the people who fought for decades for minimal conditions to exercise their sovereignty today renounce that right under the manipulation of disenchantment. Abstention is repeated, defeat is repeated. The old is not negated to create the new, but rather stagnation is affirmed, regression is perpetuated.
But the abstentionist opposition has preferred the path of sanctions, coup rhetoric, and the criminalization of migration. These strategies, far from weakening the government, have provided it with the perfect tools to stay in power. Each international sanction becomes a justification for economic hardship; each threat of external intervention reinforces the narrative of a besieged homeland; each criminalization of the Venezuelan exodus fuels the narrative of betrayal and uprooting.
The government, with an unquestionable electoral machine and a party like the PSUV created specifically to win elections, has found its best ally in opposition abstention. By winning every political space without real competition, it not only gains formal legitimacy but also achieves the absolute power that democracy so fears. It is the realization of a political nightmare: power without checks and balances, without effective opposition, without visible alternatives.
The historical responsibility for this situation cannot be evaded. For two decades, an emotionally negligent opposition has had the opportunity to present real alternatives. Three imaginary opposition presidents have emerged in this period, and none have managed to manage from Miraflores. It's all a lie, it's Hollywood fiction taken to its maximum expression, without any holds barred. This is no coincidence; it's the result of a political culture that privileges confrontation over construction, shouting over proposals, and ideological purity over political effectiveness. It's the direct result of an erratic strategy that fails to understand that in politics, it's not enough to be right; you have to have strength, organization, people, and territory. Politics isn't a discourse on social media or a diplomatic bulletin. It's hand-to-hand combat. It's election after election. It's the patient sum of each trench conquered.
The government knows this. That's why it celebrates every time the call for abstention is issued. Because while the opposition complains in statements, the PSUV activates its unbreakable machinery and wins elections with legitimacy, with votes, with territorial presence. The opposition doesn't lose only because of its stupidity, but because of the trap of its own demobilizing convictions.
And meanwhile, the people see how every alternative fades away. The average Venezuelan doesn't understand sanctions, parallel embassies, or imaginary presidents. They understand that every time they don't vote, the government wins. They understand that not voting changes nothing. That criminalizing migrants, continuing to wait for a coup d'état, or believing in magical foreign interventions only gives the government weapons to legitimize itself internationally and shield itself internally.
When you don't participate, you have to start from scratch. As if history had no weight, as if there were no memory. Every abstention is a return to nothingness. It means ceasing to exist politically. It means diluting the struggle. It means giving away the only peaceful tool for real transformation that citizens have. It is mutilating democracy in the name of ideological purity.
Abstention is not just an individual decision. It's a collective strategy with structural consequences. The democratic opposition that participated in the elections didn't just lose to the government: it lost to the radical abstentionism that paralyzes, divides, and intoxicates. And so, the government wins comfortably. It wins because it knows its adversary refuses to play along. It wins because it understands politics as a long-term struggle, while its counterpart wears itself out with sterile complaints and high-sounding declarations. The radical and fascist opposition, in its political ignorance, fails to understand that democracy is built through participation, not absenteeism. Its radicalism is conservative in the most perverse sense of the term, because it preserves the power structures it claims to combat. Its lies, its hate speech, its refusal to accept political reality, have plunged Venezuela into an emotional state that impedes constructive dialogue and the search for real solutions.
True political dialectics requires the confrontation of ideas, not their flight. It requires the construction of alternatives, not their systematic destruction. It requires active participation in democratic processes, however imperfect they may be, because it is in such participation that real transformations are forged.
The Venezuelan tragedy is not only political; it is profoundly human. Millions of citizens yearning for change are deprived of real alternatives by the negligence of those who should represent their hopes. Mass migration is not only a consequence of the economic crisis; it is also the result of political hopelessness, of the feeling that there are no institutional solutions to the crisis.
Abstention, presented as an act of rebellion, reveals itself in practice as the cruelest of conformisms. It is renunciation disguised as protest, surrender presented as a principle. People who have achieved their freedom have done so by participating, organizing, building alternatives, not by absenting themselves from the processes that determine their destiny. The path to real political change lies in understanding that politics is the art of the possible, not the art of the pure. It lies in accepting that social transformations are built from within the political system, not from its negation. It lies in understanding that every vote is a brick in the construction of change, and that every abstention is another stone in the wall that protects the established power.
History will judge harshly those who, having the opportunity to build democratic alternatives, preferred the comfort of uncompromising criticism. Venezuela deserves more than empty promises and failed strategies. It deserves an opposition that lives up to the hopes of its people, an opposition that understands that democracy is defended by participating, not by fleeing from it.
Venezuela will remain trapped in a labyrinth constructed by the unwitting complicity between the self-perpetuating power and the self-destructive opposition. The way out of this labyrinth lies not in international sanctions or threats of intervention; it lies in the patient construction of a real political alternative, in consistent participation in all available democratic spaces, and in overcoming the personal biases and fragmentation that have characterized the opposition.
The result of this election is not just a political map tinged with red. It is also a reflection of a country mired in despair, unable to organize its rage into a concrete political project. The hatred instilled by this radical opposition, which only knows how to destroy without building, has served the very power it claims to fight. History repeats itself, not as tragedy or farce, but as self-imposed defeat.
It's time to understand that political struggle can no longer be an expression of emotional frustration, but rather a concrete strategy for building power. Those who don't participate don't exist. Those who don't vote don't decide. Those who call for abstention, even if they dress like patriots, work for the government.
The only way to defeat the government is to gain ground. There are no shortcuts. There are no miracles. All that remains is to rebuild from the bottom up, with patience, persistence, and organization. Venezuela doesn't need martyrs or messiahs. It needs politicians who understand that the struggle takes place on the ground, at the ballot box, in the streets, in every corner where a glimmer of hope still exists.
Because after the vote, if there is no participation, only silence remains. And that silence has been the great ally of power. The country's political future will not be decided by foreign ministries or incendiary speeches, but by the ability to build a credible, participatory, and effective political alternative. Only in this way can the perverse cycle that has made Venezuela a prisoner of its own political contradictions be broken.
Note: The radical opposition should have participated in the elections and validated before the world the 43% they claim to have obtained in the July 2024 presidential elections and show the world that they were right, but they know that the 43% they claim to have obtained is as false as all their lies.
THERE IS NOTHING MORE EXCLUSIVE THAN BEING POOR.
0 Comentarios