Chavismo has not given in three days after proclaiming Nicolás Maduro the winner of the presidential elections in an electoral process under suspicion and has taken a further step in its defiance of the international community by threatening to arrest and imprison Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, the opposition leaders. The repression has moved to the streets, where the authorities have arrested dozens of opponents and have attacked the thousands of demonstrators who are protesting throughout the country. The pressure on Maduro’s government is maximum. The United States and important left-wing leaders such as Lula da Silva, Claudia Sheinbaum, Gabriel Boric and Gustavo Petro are demanding that he show the minutes and thus clear up any hint of doubt. Maduro, surrounded by busts of Hugo Chávez and paintings of Simón Bolívar that decorate the Miraflores Palace, his residence, does not take notice.
The request for the imprisonment of Machado and Edmundo made by Jorge Rodríguez, Maduro’s main political operator, has generated great concern. If carried out, the conflict would escalate to a new dimension. The tenant of the White House until January 2025, through the spokesperson of the US National Security Council (NSC), has said that there are clear indications that the result announced by the CNE, the Venezuelan electoral authority, “does not reflect the will of the people expressed at the polls.” Then, Kamala Harris, the vice president and possible Democratic candidate, referred directly to the threats against anti-Chavez supporters: “Violence, harassment and threats against peaceful protesters and political actors are unacceptable.” Brian A. Nichols, head of the State Department for Latin America, has joined these demands: “We reject the calls by Maduro and his inner circle for the arrest of Venezuelan opposition leaders Edmundo González and María Corina Machado.”
The Carter Center deployed an observation mission on voting day. It had 17 observers, 11 in Caracas and six spread across three other cities. On Monday, in the midst of the effervescence over allegations of fraud, it issued a statement calling for transparency from the CNE in order to verify the result. A day later, it cancelled the preliminary statement it usually offers as a preview of the final report, which is published two months later, and hours later its members left the country. Later it issued a statement discrediting the electoral process: “The 2024 Venezuelan presidential election did not conform to international parameters and standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic.” “The fact that the electoral authority has not announced results broken down by polling station constitutes a serious violation of electoral principles,” the statement reads.
The pulse has moved to the streets. Protests have spread throughout the country and Chavismo has repressed them with police and motorcyclists who are experts in breaking up rallies and frightening the population, known as collectivesThe prosecution says there are more than 700 detainees and Foro Penal, an organisation that centralises complaints of human rights violations, puts the number of dead at eleven. Machado has also made a show of force by calling on thousands of supporters in Caracas, who have shown their support without incident. Maduro had called on his supporters to counter her with another rally, but it has had no effect and only a few dozen people have gathered in front of Miraflores Palace. The Chavista leaders are aware that they need to mobilise supporters from the interior of the country who still believe in the Bolivarian revolution that Hugo Chavez started in the 1990s.
Nothing that has happened has taken the opposition by surprise. After many mistakes made in the past that helped keep Chavismo in power, they have managed to organize themselves this time in a very effective way. First, by uniting around Machado, a policy with mass appeal among all sectors of the country. Then, by preparing for a campaign in which they did not have the resources of the ruling party and had to overcome all kinds of obstacles. On the day of the vote, they distributed supporters throughout all the electoral centers and asked them to safeguard as many records as possible to demonstrate the fraud they expected. In fact, according to internal sources, they had anticipated this scenario, that Chavismo would hide the records. The information has been compiled and uploaded to social networks. The tactic has consisted of demonstrating the alteration of the results without excuses that Maduro and his circle of trust can cling to.
Chavismo intended to legitimize its government in this election. According to a leader of the PSUV, the ruling party, victory was taken for granted after Machado was disqualified. They thought that the opposition would not have the opportunity to find a reliable substitute who could mobilize voters. The polls that began to arrive weeks after Edmundo’s appointment began to worry them. They believed that this situation had been overcome when Maduro rose in the polls from 18% of voting intention to 25% in a very short time. This trend, they hoped, would continue to rise. The pollsters, however, did not show a sufficient recovery to catch up with the opposition. Then, Maduro and Rodríguez raised the tone: they began to portray Edmundo as an older man (he is 74 years old) unable to govern a country, taking note of the atmosphere that had been generated with Biden in the United States. The situation was extreme. The hardline Chavistas, the ones in charge, were determined not to show a single crack and to assure that the revolution would continue. The possibility of leaving power was not even considered. “That is not possible,” said a Chavista bureaucrat to this newspaper. During this period of instability, Nicolás Maduro Guerra, the president’s son, assured Morning Express in an interview that if Edmundo won, they would go to the opposition and demonstrate a democratic spirit. Cabello, the vice president of the PSUV, a former military man who once participated with Chávez in the failed coup d’état of 1992, later reprimanded him in public.
Maduro is living days of fury. He has multiplied his public appearances in which he accuses anyone who questions his victory of being “fascist.” He has challenged the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, to a fistfight. He has taken on Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and owner of X, who has spent 72 hours mocking him and supporting the opposition on his own social network, where he only has 192 million followers. The president has also attacked Edmundo very aggressively, a discreet man, with very refined manners, who has never been rude to his adversaries. Chavismo, although it does not verbalize it, is hurt that the supposed victory of Maduro that it has proclaimed is not recognized. That does not seem to change Maduro’s mind, who has dug in his positions. The pressure to which he is being subjected has not had any effect. For now.
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