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Opinion | OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR

Why I Am Running for President of

Venezuela
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By HENRI FALCÓN MARCH 6, 2018

CARACAS, Venezuela — Last week, I registered as a candidate for the presidency of

Venezuela. I am running for president because I think Venezuelans should have a
choice of whether to continue with the disastrous rule of President Nicolás Maduro, or
to support a route of inclusion, progress and justice.

Some of my fellow members in the opposition coalition have called for boycotting
the election, claiming that misconduct by the regime makes a free and fair vote
impossible. They are right in denouncing the abuses of the government: Mr. Maduro
has persecuted opposition leaders, banned political parties, filled electoral institutions
with his loyalists and blatantly used government resources in his campaign.
Venezuela’s presidential election will be played on an uneven playing field.

Those who want to sit out the election argue that participating lends legitimacy to
a rigged process. They also worry that the international support that the opposition
has been able to muster could wane as a result of our decision.

These concerns are legitimate. But we can’t give up and let Mr. Maduro get away
with six more years in power. Choosing to fight under unfair rules does not legitimize
the rules: it affirms our willingness to defend our rights. And if the government
decides to steal this election, it can count on finding me in the streets, by the sides of
the brave Venezuelan people, fighting for our right to be respected.
 My difference is one of strategy. Electoral boycotts almost never work. In country
after country, opposition forces that abandoned the field of electoral competition have
lost ground and allowed rulers to consolidate power. A comprehensive Brookings
study of 171 cases of boycotting around the world found that 96 percent of the time,
the movements promoting the boycotts did not see positive results.

When resistance movements decided instead to confront authoritarian regimes at the

polls — authoritarians from Pinochet to Milosevic — they had a much greater chance
of producing regime change. Governments do not win elections during periods of
hyperinflation — except when, as in Zimbabwe in 2008, the opposition makes the fatal
mistake of boycotting the vote.

Opinion surveys consistently show that Venezuelans want to vote in the coming
elections. In a recent study sponsored by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, 69
percent of Venezuelans — and 58 percent of opposition supporters — said they were
willing to vote, even with the regime’s abuses. And 56 percent of opposition supporters
said that they would vote even if the opposition coalition alliance called for a boycott.

I agree that divisions in the opposition are harmful to our cause. Still, since the
overwhelming majority of Venezuelans want to vote, my responsibility is to stand by
our people, even if it means breaking with the minority that wants to sit out the
election. I will continue to devote my efforts to convincing others to join our cause and
help it grow into the avalanche of votes that will sweep Mr. Maduro out of power.

During his six devastating years in government, Mr. Maduro has caused the
deepest economic contraction in recorded Latin American history and the world’s only
hyperinflation in the last decade. A worker earning a minimum wage can now buy less
than one-tenth of the goods and services he could purchase when Mr. Maduro came to
power. Twenty-seven percent of Venezuelans now eat fewer than three meals a day —
in contrast to 5 percent when he took office. Venezuelans cannot stand for six more
years of hunger, corruption and incompetence.

The overriding priority of my administration will be to make sure that not one
Venezuelan child goes to bed without having eaten. I will seek international assistance
— including from bilateral and multilateral agencies — to replenish stocks of food and
medicines. I will create a program of conditional cash transfers with the objective of
eradicating hunger. I will also immediately free all the country’s political prisoners,
thrown in the government’s dungeons for the sole crime of thinking differently. These
decisions are not unrelated. As the Nobel economics laureate Amartya Sen has shown,
 true democracy is the best antidote to famine. Venezuelans want and deserve to be free
from oppression and free from hunger.

Venezuelans’ plight today is the result of two decades of mismanagement. My

country sits on the world’s largest oil reserves and enjoyed a huge oil boom from 1998
to 2012. Regrettably, the money from that good fortune was squandered and stolen.
Venezuelans deserve to have their public finances be managed with honesty,
responsibility and common sense. We should partner with the rest of the world to
build a dynamic economy that can deliver equitable and sustainable growth.

Decades ago, our nation was a place of refuge for those fleeing oppression. In this
dark hour, we have counted on the help of many neighbors and friends around the
world who have supported our fight for freedom. That solidarity is now more critical
than ever to restore democracy in our country.

My plea to Venezuelans who oppose Mr. Maduro’s despotic rule is to reach across
our divisions and reunite around the common project of a better country. But
reconciliation begins with justice, and those responsible for human rights violations
and corruption must be held accountable.

I am proud to have been born in the country that spawned Latin America’s
independence movement. We now head into our greatest challenge: one in which we
will show that the strength of our people’s votes speaks louder than the government’s
bullets.

Henri Falcón is the former governor of Lara State.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 7, 2018, in The International New York Times.

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