United States Institute of Peace

But the larger picture may be less about a single election and a single candidate than the architecture for reconciliation that Venezuelans need to stitch their country back together after decades of political and social warfare that has left the country depleted. What is needed is a larger national agreement on coexistence that defines the place of all political parties and social factions and the many levels of security forces in the country’s political landscape in what will necessarily be a lengthy and messy process of reconciliation. What it needn’t include, and Venezuelans have been determined to avoid, is widespread violence of the kind that has afflicted most similar cases. 

From Pressure for Regime Change to Incentives for Elections

International approaches to Venezuela have gone through several phases, all from a starting point that foreign actors would not own the country’s future but would attempt to steer it toward democracy and free markets. In the first phase, the international community applied measured pressure on Venezuela to try to move it toward democracy while maintaining diplomatic and commercial relations. In 2017, there was a pivot to maximum pressure and the establishment of an alternate government in an effort to support the opposition in overthrowing the regime, with the United States and many countries breaking relations with Venezuela in the process. Since 2020, countries have been reengaging with Nicolás Maduro’s government and the United States has pivoted to a policy of lifting sanctions selectively as part of a negotiated process of reconciliation that would support a free and fair election. The Venezuelan people through all of this were generally against national sanctions and in favor of elections, but also in favor of change, so current policies are probably the most aligned with the will of the people. This measured policy is bearing fruit, but it has now reached its natural limits.

When Elections Alone Are Not Enough

What is needed now is not to scuttle the hard work that has been done on the current election but accept that the electoral process alone is insufficient. This framing goes back to a much earlier period of political conflict in 2003, when Carter Center negotiators and analysts Francisco Diez and Jennifer McCoy, having spent lengthy periods of time attempting to broker a solution to the country’s political and social crises, concluded that the “code” of the election is “the elimination of the other.” The electoral contest of the time was a recall referendum, which Diez and McCoy saw would be used by the opposition if it came to power to erase Chavismo, while the late Hugo Chávez saw it as a way to eliminate opponents of his revolutionary project and consolidate power. In their book, International Mediation in Venezuela, McCoy and Diez conclude: “None of them are thinking about coexistence after elections.” 

What is needed is a larger framework or architecture that would anchor the process of reconciliation and give it a viable end state, within which the electoral path can resume its primacy. An election in Venezuela without a larger framework agreement for governing and national vision would lead to a road that would be not only rocky but likely untraversable.

The Punto Fijo Model

It would not be the first time Venezuela has found a way out of polarizing political conflict. Diez and McCoy describe how Venezuela’s “model democracy” for the four decades from 1958 to 1998 was grounded in the Pact of Punto Fijo, an agreement between the three main political parties, with buy-in from the military and labor unions. The agreement covered power sharing, reconciliation of old antagonisms, respect for individual liberties, the place of the state in economic growth, distribution of wealth and foreign policy. As Michael Penfold and Javier Corrales suggest, it set “the terms of democratic political competition following years of dictatorship.”  

While the agreement brought relative peace to the country for four decades, during the last two it was fraying. It did not include broad enough parties, with the far left excluded, and as Penfold and Corrales point out it relied entirely on an economic statist ideology, leaving the country unable to keep up with shifting global economic trends. Discontent grew, resulting in the election of Chávez in 1998, shredding the agreement and thrusting the country into perpetual crisis and decades of low-level civil war. 

Models for Reconciliation

There have been several proposals for reconciliation put forward over the past several months. 

Former Colombian Foreign Minister Álvaro Leyva offered that something akin to the National Front that Colombia’s political parties negotiated in the late 1950s to end a decade of violence could be adapted to Venezuela, with the country’s two parties agreeing to a system of shared governance and alternation of power over a lengthy period.  Drawing on Colombia’s later experience in its own peace process, Colombian President Gustavo Petro has suggested a referendum that would allow the citizenry to affirm basic principles of national reconciliation and coexistence alongside the election.   

Analyst Francisco Rodriguez suggested in a recent Foreign Affairs article that “the way out of Venezuela’s current crisis is . . .through an inclusive political settlement that allows the country’s competing factions to coexist.” Elections alone, Rodriguez suggests, “do not produce stable democracies. Democracy requires institutions that restrict state power, preserve a role for political minorities, and prevent elected leaders from using their authority to sideline their opponents.” He recommends using the existing Barbados negotiation process, but upgraded to “draw on the strategies of peace mediation and conflict resolution,” to coerce the parties to negotiate institutional reforms that make power sharing inevitable.

In Rodriguez’s plan, “negotiations would proceed on two tracks: one aimed at comprehensive political reform, the other focused on the immediate humanitarian emergency.” The former would involve a kind of “national unity government” after the 2024 elections — “with nonpartisan professionals leading the finance ministry, central bank, and state-owned oil industry, they can set the groundwork for a major economic recovery.”

“With a goal of coexistence, rather than the triumph of one group over another,” Rodriguez suggests, “negotiators can converge on reforms that both sides consider a win. If a settlement guarantees both the heirs of Chávez’s political movement and its opponents the opportunity to participate in Venezuelan politics, instead of threatening either side with persecution and repression if they lose the next election, the risk of accepting a deal will be lower for all. After a decade of destructive conflict, Venezuela’s political factions now have a chance to jointly steer the country toward economic recovery and stability.”

Toward a Coexistence Pact

But the most concrete formula to date has been put forward from Venezuelan civil society by analyst and commentator Víctor Álvarez, who has gone beyond the theoretical and created a framework for shoring up the post post-electoral process. Titled a “Pact of Peaceful Coexistence Between the Candidates for the Presidency of the Republic,” Álvarez’s proposal would be legally and constitutionally grounded, and accompanied by international guarantors.  It centers on respect for the political rights of the losers as the anchor to an electoral outcome that opens the door to the alternation of power. 

Significantly, as he expressed in a recent podcast, “the pact is not about negotiating an exit; it is about negotiating coexistence.” The parties would acknowledge that “alternation in power through electoral and peaceful means will depend on the net balance between the costs of remaining in government and the costs of leaving.” Neither side would seek “the unconditional capitulation or extermination of the other,” and a system of amnesty for political offenses would be negotiated, while holding out a truth commission to allow for the pursuit of justice for victims. As with Rodriguez’s plan, the pact places considerable emphasis on the reinstitutionalization of public powers and some form of blending of government institutions, as opposed to an all-or-nothing takeover.

Álvarez answers critics who may suggest that such a proposal goes too far or would be too difficult by reminding them that even those who do not accept the premise should bear in mind “that a victorious opposition candidate in the 2024 presidential elections will have to coexist with the legislative, judicial, electoral and citizen powers, as well as most of the governorships and mayorships, under the control of Chavismo.” In such circumstances, “a Coexistence Pact is necessary to advance towards a culture of political coexistence, cohabitation and cooperation between the different authorities, to ensure respect and collaboration at the national, state and municipal government levels.”

While the core of the pact would be political guarantees that will prevent judicial persecution post-election, Álvarez also believes a basic consensus on economic policy will be required for the desperately needed economic recovery. He writes, “the new government will receive a country with serious macroeconomic imbalances that are shrinking production and generating inflation — an oil industry in ruins; a serious deterioration of public services such as drinking water, electricity, domestic gas, telecommunications, and fuel shortages; and an enormous social debt with collapsed public education and health systems.”

Additionally, Álvarez envisions “a Coexistence Pact must set up a clear role for the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) during the transition process. It will not be enough that the Constitution establishes that the FANB will not be a deliberative actor and should be subordinate to civilian power. National and international public opinion knows very well the degree of economic power it has, as well as the political relationship with Chavismo.” Instead of excising and persecuting the military commanders, “the FANB as an institution must be offered incentives to guarantee the respect of the electoral results and support the alternation of power.”

Critics of the approach believe it simply gives up too much in the area of justice and accountability. Álvarez argues that “the sensitive issue of Transitional Justice will be a key component so that the Coexistence Pact is not distorted as a Pact of Impunity.” He suggests “it must be considered as a wide national agreement that will allow progress towards the clarification of the truth, justice and reparation of victims, non-repetition of crimes, as well as forgiveness, reconciliation, and the rebuilding of the Venezuelan nation so that it can resume the path of political peace, economic growth and social welfare.” 

Coexistence Is a Choice

In addition to the technical political issues Álvarez outlines above, some civil society leaders have urged the development of a shared vision for Venezuela. In the structure of a coexistence pact, it would be a kind of preamble to the agreement itself that points Venezuelans in the direction of what they all agree on, rather than what they have been led to divide over.

One civil society leader in 2021 mounted a campaign asking Venezuelans: “What were you before you were a Chavista or anti-Chavista?” Drawing from the country’s rich legacy of nature, sport and shared values, the social media campaign urged a deeper focus on what naturally unites Venezuelans than what artificially divides them. 

Another painted a visual picture of the confluence of the Caroní and Orinoco Rivers in Bolivar State. For kilometers, the brown waters of the Caroní run side by side with the blue waters of the Orinoco until they eventually blend into a single color. This civil society leader suggested 10 values that Venezuelans share, among them social participation, equality, liberty, solidarity, religiosity, creativity and a wicked sense of humor, as the basis for a shared sense of “being Venezuelan.”  From these shared values a political protocol is urged, including universal suffrage, power sharing, liberty of expression, strong institutions, judicial security and a state dedicated to the health, education and welfare of all its citizens. Essentially, a manifesto for social democracy.

Other efforts have focused on increasing tolerance and simple respect for “the other” in a society that has been among the most deliberately polarized in the world. The objective of such efforts was to create the social baseline from which institutional democratic coexistence might flourish. 

Coexistence is a choice. South African journalist David Greybe, who covered the transition from Apartheid to democratic coexistence in South Africa, wrote of the determination and courage required to see the process through. Greybe describes how in the midst of “a number of bloody months in 1992,” framed by the Boipatong massacre in June and the Bisho massacre in September, Nelson Mandela’s “stubborn and steely resolve to stick to the goal of a peaceful political settlement... set him apart from other leaders.” This “absolute determination to keep moving forward on a peaceful path, in the face of intolerable provocations, rather than resort to revenge or violence, was unheard of at the time.” Several weeks after the Boipatong massacre, Mandela and Frederik Willem de Klerk, then president of South Africa, signed the “Record of Understanding,” laying out the course for a single, freely elected constitutional assembly that would draft a new constitution, preparing South Africa for the first democratic elections less than two years later. 

Venezuela will need similar leaders on both sides to see it through to the conclusion of this fraught electoral contest to a place where societal healing and institutional renewal can begin.