Venezuela has just announced an election and it's terrible news for democracy

News that Venezuela will hold a presidential election by the end of April dismayed democracy activists in the country. You might have good reason to find that sentence paradoxical. But if you do, you don’t understand Venezuela.

Why? Because the announcement was unilateral: my way or the highway. As such, it put a brutal end to a careful diplomatic dance that many people had hoped would yield an election they could believe in.

For the past three months, government and opposition representatives have been negotiating in the Dominican Republic, under international auspices, to try to agree on a set of minimal elections guarantees. Backed by diplomats from Mexico and Chile, opposition leaders had been pressing to appoint a credible new National Electoral Council that could hold an election free of the brazen abuses that have plagued recent Venezuelan elections.

By announcing an election without an agreement, the regime signaled that this isn’t going to happen. So Venezuelans should expect the upcoming vote to be another farce along the lines of the profoundly flawed municipal elections the government held last month.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/democracy-post/wp/2018/01/24/venezuela-has-just-announced-an-election-and-its-terrible-news-for-democracy/