In the Venezuelan opposition, everyone seems aware of the impact that the publication of the presidential election results by the campaign command of Edmundo González Urrutia and María Corina Machado, in the face of the government’s lack of transparency, had on national and international opinion, and there is a widespread belief that they have achieved a crushing electoral defeat for Chavismo (67% for the opposition candidate compared to 30% for Nicolás Maduro), in particularly unequal and atypical conditions.
But beyond the conclusions, the prevailing feeling is fear. Politicians are closed off. Interviews are cancelled. People close to the leaders change their phone numbers. There is a huge reserve in WhatsApp groups; Zoom conversations are scarce. The police harass citizens looking for data on their mobile phones. Witnesses and polling station members are being harassed by the courts. At least two civil activists have been detained, for eight hours or more, at the Maiquetía International Airport. There are many, too many, analysts and observers who prefer to leave their opinions for another time.
The repression of Chavismo in the week after the elections has led both González and Machado to address the Armed Forces in a joint statement on Monday. A text in which he signs as “president-elect of Venezuela” and she as leader of the “democratic forces of Venezuela”. “Do not repress the people, accompany them”, they demand in the statement, in which they insist on the “overwhelming” victory of the opposition candidate and criticise “the brutal offensive” of Nicolás Maduro against “democratic leaders, witnesses, members of the table and even against the common citizen”. The letter includes a call “to the conscience of the military and police to place themselves on the side of the people” and abandon the Maduro government.
For his part, the Chavista leader has the arguments against him, but he objectively controls the levers of power. The Venezuelan president has announced that 2,000 prisoners will go to maximum security prisons for protesting, and he says there will be more arrests: “Enough of impunity, fascism is over, there is no negotiation with fascists. The people have already spoken, and they want peace,” he declared. Maduro has the support of the Armed Forces, and has just requested an injunction from the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice, before which he has promised to submit the minutes of the election, which have not yet been published, in order to clarify his proclaimed electoral victory. It is expected that the Supreme Court, controlled by the ruling party, will rule in his favor.
There is, therefore, a strange feeling of paralysis in Venezuela. Few people, no one in fact, can imagine what is coming. Maduro is constantly present on television, irritated, threatening, ready to assert his version of events. The presidential elections of July 28, which took place just last week, seem like six months ago.
“For the Venezuelan democratic movement, there is only one objective: that Edmundo González Urrutia be proclaimed president of the republic on January 10 of next year,” says Carlos Blanco, economist and political analyst, command strategist, close advisor to María Corina Machado.
A process that, he believes, is just beginning, and that will have multiple setbacks, in an eventual space of negotiation in which the international community mediates. Blanco rules out that a transition agreement would take María Corina Machado out of the picture, as the negotiation promoted by Mexico, Colombia and Brazil intends, as Morning Express anticipated. “María Corina and Edmundo are a binomial, she is the popular engine, he is the candidate. There is no possibility that both act separately, and even less now. The idea of negotiating only with Edmundo, without María Corina being present, is absurd, they are maneuvers destined to create problems that the opposition already resolved in the past.”
Blanco does not consider it appropriate to wait for the Venezuelan state institutions to resolve this problem, “since the election has already taken place. The victory has been achieved, and they do not want to recognize it. Here we must mobilize; it is very important to maintain this enormous support from the international community to exert the necessary pressure.”
For Carmen Beatriz Fernández, an electoral consultant and political analyst, Venezuela is entering uncharted territory. “There are many hopes placed on what Lula, Gustavo Petro and López Obrador can do, perhaps too many.” Fernández believes that the international perception of the opposition victory is clear, but she distinguishes between those nations that do not recognize, in the current terms, Maduro’s reelection, such as some European countries, and those that have expressly recognized González Urrutia’s victory, as has been the case in the United States and other Latin American nations.
“The difference is not trivial,” he continues. It marks different paths in the negotiations of a problem that is already a Latin American one. Those nations that limit themselves to questioning the election, without admitting Gonzalez’s victory, could be laying the groundwork for invalidating an election, seeking an agreement to repeat it, not to enforce the result, a path that is more comfortable for Maduro,” he says.
Tulio Hernández, a sociologist and analyst, believes that the consequences of the electoral outcome do not offer alternative readings: Venezuela has entered into a dictatorship, and perhaps it is no longer time to discuss political strategies. “We have left behind the hegemonic authoritarian framework, and we have arrived at the zone of totalitarianism. An unprecedented process in this dimension,” he says. “There are almost no free media left; the power breaks diplomatic relations with Latin America; isolation deepens, journalists are expelled; police ask citizens for their phone numbers looking for political information. It is the most dangerous, most serious, saddest moment in these 25 years. Here the government has renounced any democratic disguise. International pressure helps, it makes the problem visible, but, as we have seen, it does not solve it. The only thing left is to resist.”
“I would start with these five words, to give context: there is no rule of law. It is not easy to talk about what can be done. The political power in Venezuela is doing what it wants. The massive popular support that González Urrutia has is fundamental, but not enough,” says sociologist, academic and researcher Ramón Piñango, from the Institute of Advanced Studies in Administration, IESA.
Professor Piñango maintains, however, that the Maduro government is not showing signs of health, “and it is not rhetoric to say this. The Chavistas did not imagine that they would end up so badly. Many of them have doubts about the outcome. It is not easy for people to assimilate this reality. What has happened in the country affects everything one does. The consequences will be serious, and many in power are clear about that. We are going little by little. Here it is necessary not to rush.”
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