From Chavez to Modi: How India’s Democracy Risks a Venezuelan Fate

Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi’s explosive press conference on 7th August presented conclusive evidence of the electoral fraud committed by India’s Election Commission. In his hour-long exposé, the Congress leader did not just give episodic or anecdotal evidence of electoral fraud; he laid bare a systemic attempt by the Commission to overturn the popular mandate.

Yes, Gandhi’s PowerPoint display exposed the bogus voting in just one assembly constituency in Karnataka, where more than one lakh votes had been fraudulently cast during the last Lok Sabha election. But that was a good enough snapshot to give us a glimpse of the dark underbelly of our once much-admired constitutional body.

As Rahul Gandhi said, his team took more than six months to complete this exercise, after meticulously poring through the booth-level data and travelling to remote parts of the constituency to expose the list of fake voters. As he affirmed, if a similar forensic exercise is done in assembly segments in Haryana and Maharashtra, where the BJP won last year — contrary to the prediction of the Exit Polls and most ground reports — it could be shown that the Election Commission of India indulged in outcome-determinative fraud there too.

Election Commission: From Pride to Partisan Tool

Why has our Election Commission, which was once hailed worldwide for undertaking a continental exercise smoothly and fairly— without fear or favour— stooped so low as to besmirch its formidable reputation? The answer is obvious: the government of the day has forced its hand. The retired officers helmed the Commission even in the Congress days, but there is a difference between then and now. The Congress regime allowed the Election Commission the autonomy guaranteed under the Constitution. Even Indira Gandhi did not interfere in its work when the parliamentary elections were held in 1977, with the official Emergency still in vogue. But the authoritarian Modi government has no such qualms; it wants to use the Election Commission as a handmaiden to perpetuate itself in power.

The Modi regime is clearly following the authoritarian playbook of Putin’s Russia or Chavez’s Venezuela. Russia anyway, had emerged from a totalitarian past; its tryst with democracy was short and tentative. But Venezuela, like India, had decades of democratic experiment before Hugo Chavez decided to upend it in the first decade of this century. Modi is following Chavez’s footsteps now.

Well, though both Modi and Chavez have been populist leaders, they are poles apart in their ideological zeitgeist; one is a rightist reactionary, but the other was a fire-breathing revolutionary. But both considered themselves indispensable for their respective countries. So both, formally or informally, tore apart the Constitution through which they had come to power in the first place in order to rule for life.

Rahul Gandhi Links Modi’s Tactics to Chavez’s Playbook

Eminent historian Ramachandra Guha once said: ‘Among the leftists in the JNU campus, Narendra Modi is a hate figure but Hugo Chavez is a hero; but they tend to forget that Chavez was a Modi on steroids’.

Just a year after coming to power through legitimate means in 1998, Chavez discarded the Constitution, extended his term as president to six years, vastly widened his own executive power, dissolved the bicameral legislature, packed the National Electoral Council ( the body that conducts elections), the Supreme Tribunal of Justice ( the apex judiciary) and the National Armed Forces with Chavistas (supporters of Chavez’s left-wing populism).

What followed was that an immensely popular leader became the invincible leader; till his death in 2013, he ruled Venezuela with an iron hand. To his credit, despite his strong-arm methods, Chavez tried to keep the symbolism of a popular mandate intact. However, after him, his designated successor, Nicolas Maduro, has dispensed with that symbolic deference to optics as well. He clearly lost the election to a united opposition candidate in the presidential vote in July last year — all international observers vouched for it — but he stayed in power, thanks to the backing of the Armed Forces of Venezuela.

Democracy Under Siege: Institutions Captured, Opposition Cornered

Had Narendra Modi had his way, he would have followed Chavez’s footsteps by quickly shredding the Constitution and packing the Election Commission, the Supreme Court of India, and the Indian defence forces with Hindutva-spouting party men. But India has stronger roots of democracy that can withstand such assaults; he is, therefore, following the footprint of Chavez steadily, but slowly. He is taking every step to break free from any institutional constraint: he got the rules changed so that the Chief Justice of India is not involved in the selection of the members of the Election Commission. He is making desperate efforts to snatch the power to select judges of the higher judiciary from the domain of the judicial collegium; he wants to make it a close preserve of the executive machinery. He has weaponised the investigative agencies to silence opponents and the critics of the regime.

The aim is clear: how to stifle the opposition and remain in power in perpetuity. Chavez had succeeded in his game plan. He strode like a colossus till his death. However, the sad truth is that both Chavez and his chosen successor have led the once prosperous country to being an economic basket case in the last quarter century.

As Rahul Gandhi exposed last Thursday, Narendra Modi is bent on harnessing the pivotal institutions of the country to ensure that he is in the driver’s seat till he breathes his last; he would like to see his designated successor — be it Amit Shah or Yogi Adityanath — carry on his legacy after him.

It’s now left to the united opposition parties in the country ( they all met last Thursday to demonstrate their opposition to the diabolical SIR exercise being conducted by the Election Commission in Bihar) and all truly patriotic Indians — professionals, students and activists — to foil the machinations of the current regime and protect the foundations of our cherished democracy. India must not turn into another Venezuela.