The United States and regional leftist powers (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, with Chile’s close support) are wondering what to do with Nicolás Maduro Moros, who has seemed irritated these days. He has barely slept. In his public appearances he has cast impatient and displeased glances at advisers who were slow to give him a thumbs down. play to a video or that they couldn’t remember a name that was on the tip of their tongue. In the Miraflores Palace, you can’t hear his laughter in the hallways or the jokes he often makes with everyone, from Cilia Flores, the first lady, to the guards and the cooks. According to a leader of the PSUV, the ruling party, and analysts and diplomats, no other scenario than victory in the presidential elections last Sunday ever crossed his mind. The suspicion that his government apparatus committed fraud on Sunday to claim a victory that in reality belonged to Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, has paralyzed an already turbulent country.
A significant part of the international community is wondering what is the best way to resolve a political conflict that involves all of Latin America, due to the millions of Venezuelans who have been scattered across the continent due to the country’s economic crisis. Washington has opted, in this first week, to corner Maduro and force him to make quick decisions by recognizing his rival as the winner. The neighboring countries with which Venezuela shares an ideological closeness, on the other hand, are betting on a negotiation that will allow a recount of the records that the Venezuelan electoral body has not yet shown and offer a negotiated exit to Chavismo in case it has really been defeated.
Ten days ago, Maduro could not have imagined himself in such a scenario. The polls that were brought to his office were positive. Those circulating on social networks announcing a severe defeat were false, fabricated by his enemies, he was assured. focus group and sociological analyses, at the forefront of anthropological studies, told him that he was the strong, herculean, physically powerful candidate, facing an elderly gentleman, Edmundo González Urrutia, 74 years old, a reader, with gentle manners. Someone came up with the idea that he should be presented to Venezuelans as a rooster with a long crest. In a cockfighting ring, repeated the Chavista leaders who traveled the country campaigning, he would punish Edmundo González with his quills, whom they described as a plucked chicken. Some illuminated drones drew a rooster in the sky of Caracas on the day of his closing campaign.
Ronald Pena R (EFE)
Nothing has gone according to plan. Chavismo was preparing for a resounding victory that would show the world that Maduro is no usurper, but the legitimate president of a people who love him. The ballot boxes were going to prove it. The National Electoral Council (CNE), in the hands of Chavismo, announced Maduro as the winner early Monday morning after a delay of several hours in the counting. However, it only offered a total number of votes and not the data broken down by polling station, so there is no way to confirm its veracity. Within hours a cloak of suspicion spread over the entire process. The opposition, anticipating the possibility of fraud, had asked all its witnesses to photograph these records and send them to Caracas, where they would be reviewed and totaled. According to these documents, which have been posted online for anyone to consult, González won by a wide margin.
The Maduro government, the opposition and the White House saw in these elections the possibility of ending a political crisis that has lasted almost a decade. The agreement between these parties, discussed in Qatar, Barbados and Mexico, consisted of the Chavistas allowing opposition candidates to stand and committing to holding fair and transparent elections. The anti-Chavez supporters would acknowledge defeat if all these scenarios occurred and were to help democratize the system, currently controlled by Chavez. And the United States would lift the more than 900 sanctions it has imposed on Venezuela and the Chavista leaders. After July 28, however, far from being resolved, the crisis has deepened and has led the country into a labyrinth.
Most of the international community is asking Maduro to show the minutes. Seven days later, the CNE has not done so and is referring to the official 30-day deadline it has to publish them – historically they have been released immediately. Maduro is not giving in, for now. Washington said it was running out of patience and on Thursday announced Edmundo González as the winner. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged the start of a transition period between presidents. This request was supported by a series of countries that, in cascade, declared the opposition the winner. In practice, these nations are beginning to disavow Maduro as president and annul him as a valid interlocutor. The Venezuelan president says he is the victim of an international conspiracy, an “extreme right” coup d’état involving the magnates Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Even within Chavismo, some doubt whether he is serious when he mentions them.
Latin American left-wing leaders are convinced that this is the wrong path, that it leads nowhere. They have been surprised and annoyed that Joe Biden has rushed to announce a winner, when the results can still be presented. Gustavo Petro, from Colombia; Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from Brazil, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from Mexico, ask Chavismo to do it, the sooner the better. With this, they would make it clear that they are the winners and, in the process, they could stop the protests in the streets, which have so far resulted in more than a dozen deaths. Given the refusal to hand over anything, many think that Chavismo is gaining time to falsify results by cities and municipalities that coincide with the final data. The experts, however, explain that these results are difficult to replicate and the deception could be very evident.
In any case, what the presidents of the three regional leftist powers want – Chilean Gabriel Boric has been removed from the operation for maintaining a very direct and public confrontation with Maduro – is to open negotiations immediately based on two assumptions: that the results are shown in detail and that Edmundo González and the Venezuelan president sit down at a table to talk. According to what Morning Express revealed on Friday, María Corina Machado, the undisputed leader of the opposition, who after being vetoed by the institutions controlled by Chavismo, appointed González to participate on her behalf, should be excluded from these conversations. The government thought that this coup would not work, but in a matter of days the opposition made her very popular and she arrived on Sunday with large numbers. The presidents’ intention to exclude her is delicate. None of the three feels admiration for her; in fact, they have often referred to her supposed radicalism to justify soft positions with Chavismo. Machado comes from a liberal right wing that at some point in her life leaned towards extreme positions that she has now softened; they come from the Latin American left of the seventies and eighties, progressive in some points and conservative on issues such as feminism.
But that, in the end, is not the barrier. The presidents know full well that Machado monopolizes the anti-Chavez vote; in two years she has become a reference that no one in the opposition disputes, not even those who do not like her. The problem is that Chavismo does not want to see her involved in any negotiation. Her name, in Maduro’s circle, is barely mentioned. Petro, Lula and López Obrador know that Chavismo will not sit down to discuss with her, only with Edmundo González. They do not find it so strange that this is done, since he was the candidate and the president in case a transparent recount proves him right. This dialogue between the parties must establish that both will accept the result, as long as there is a verifiable scrutiny by independent entities. The presidents plan to meet with Maduro in the next few days and convince him to stick to this negotiation, a less harsh path than that of the United States, which demands an immediate solution.
Critics of the presidents’ plan say that Chavismo is once again trying to buy time and engage in another dialogue that will drag on like the previous ones. However, there are few other solutions in sight. Some defend a repeat election with exhaustive verification, others a more direct dialogue in which an amnesty is offered to Maduro and his circle – no more than 20 people – on the condition that they accept the result that appears to have come out of the ballot boxes. Any dialogue will not be easy. Maduro has survived sanctions, international isolation, the parallel Venezuelan government abroad devised by the United States, and an economic crisis that forced a quarter of Venezuelans to leave. For the moment, he has the loyalty of the police and the military. He and the people around him are experts at resistance, authentic marathon runners of attrition. Almost all of them have been denouncing conspiracies, attempts at destabilization, external fascist charges since the time of Hugo Chavez. That’s 25 years. A quarter of a century of Bolivarian revolution. And, from what they say in public, they see themselves strong enough for another 25. The international community wants to stop this internal conflict and is looking for a solution through various means, a way out. The art of diplomacy at its finest.
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