Maduro And Failed Respect For Sovereign Power Of The People
BY INWALOMHE DONALD
FEW crises in recent years have tested the boundaries of sovereignty, justice, and raw power as recently as Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro. What began as a domestic political and economic breakdown has developed into a global argument about disputed elections, sanctions, foreign intervention, and the uneven enforcement of international law.
From Lagos to Caracas, the central question is no longer only whether Maduro governed well or badly, but who gets to decide when a state has failed, how accountability is enforced, and whose rules ultimately prevail.
Nicolás Maduro rose to power in 2013 as the chosen successor of Hugo Chávez, inheriting a political project built on oil wealth, state dominance, and social redistribution. At the time, oil accounted for more than 90 percent of Venezuela’s export earnings, a level of dependence economists long warned was unsustainable.
The capture of President Maduro has raised concern about an attack on sovereign nation. But people are not balancing it with President Maduro’s attack on sovereign power of the people. Attack on sovereign power of the people of Venezuela was a national security strategy for Nicolas Maduro. Sovereignty rests with the people, this is known as popular sovereignty. This principle is the cornerstone of modern democratic thought, positing that the ultimate authority of the state derives from the consent of the governed.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), specifically Article 21(3), explicitly states that “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government. John Locke located supreme power with the people, arguing that individuals form a social contract to establish a government that protects their rights to life, liberty, and property. He viewed the power of the legislature as a fiduciary trust, meaning that ultimately the supreme power belongs to the people, who can modify or remove the government if it fails to protect their interests.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau further developed the idea, arguing that sovereignty (the “general will”) is inalienable and indivisible, residing exclusively in the people as a collective body. To Rousseau, the people alone have the authority to make and impose laws, and government acts as a mere agent of this general will.
It is widely documented by international bodies and a significant portion of the global community that Nicolás Maduro has failed to respect the sovereign power of the people by systematically undermining democratic institutions, manipulating elections, and engaging in severe human rights abuses. There are 8.2 million Venezuelans that Nicolas Maduro has driven to exile since 2013. The power of the sovereignty of the people does not matter to Nicolas Maduro but some people are talking about the sovereignty of Venezuela.
The principle that the will of the people is the source of government authority is evident in the UN Charter’s opening words, “We the Peoples,” which suggest that the legitimacy of states and the UN itself originates from the people. This concept is further developed in subsequent international human rights documents:
The Venezuelan Constitution explicitly establishes the sovereignty of the people and the supremacy of the Constitution as fundamental principles. These concepts are enshrined in the foundational articles of the current 1999 Constitution. President Maduro failed to respect the Sovereign Power of 8.2 Million exiled People of Venezuela and Supremacy of Venezuelan Constitution. Article 5 of the Venezuelan Constitution states that sovereignty resides “untransferable in the people”.
In 2020, during Trump’s first term, the Department of Justice charged Maduro in the Southern District of New York for “narco-terrorism,” conspiracy to import cocaine, and related charges. The Trump administration offered a $15 million bounty for Maduro’s arrest. That bounty was increased to $25 million in the waning days of the Biden administration, in early January 2025, and was increased again, to $50 million, in August 2025 after Trump took office for a second term and designated Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The administration has claimed that Maduro is the leader of that group, which it describes as a criminal organization. Together, these principles establish a framework where the people are the ultimate authority, and their will, as expressed in the Constitution, is the highest law of the land.
The presidential election in Venezuela took place on 28 July 2024. It ended with proven fraud: Chavista incumbent Nicolás Maduro allegedly won with 51.95 per cent of the votes cast compared to 43.18 per cent for the opposition candidate, Edmundo González. In a brilliantly prepared process, supported by volunteers in 58,000 volunteer groups, the clever opposition obtained copies of around 85 per cent of the election files (Spanish: ‘actas de escrutinio’), the results from over 30,000 polling stations in the country, digitised them on election night and calculated the true result as an estimate from this huge sample: around 67 per cent for González and just 30 per cent for Maduro, proving clear electoral fraud by the Maduro regime!
The disaster for Maduro had already been foreshadowed months before the election. The extremely popular, charismatic María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela party, a member of Liberal International, was denied the presidential candidacy by the courts despite huge success in the opposition primaries. Only this led to the largely unknown Edmundo González running with the full support of the united opposition – in effect as a kind of proxy for Machado. The final conclusion to the electoral fraud was finally provided by a court judgement later in August, which confirmed the results with Maduro as the winner – without the electoral authority having published the election files produced by the voting machines to date.
Inwalomhe Donald writes via inwalomhe.donald@yahoo.com
