Nicolás Maduro's election fraud pulls wool over Venezuela's eyes

Massive protests have erupted across Venezuela.

Repression has left more than two thousand people arrested, many of them forcibly disappeared, hundreds injured and 22 killed in a week.

In hundreds of cities, in the poorest barrios, self-convened crowds have taken to the streets in response to the official announcement of Nicolás Maduro's alleged electoral victory.

The government-controlled National Electoral Council (CNE) hastily proclaimed Maduro without complying with the legal requirements to do so, and the military high command reaffirmed its loyalty.

The deployment of paramilitary death squads, national guards, Bolivarian police and armoured cars is the last line of defence of a government that no longer has any semblance of legality or popular support.

On election night, July 28, the authorities suspended the transmission of data from the voting centres to the CNE headquarters and roughly an hour later presented a result giving Maduro, who has ruled since 2013, a lead of almost seven percent over Edmundo González, supported by the traditional right-wing opposition.

The government excused this illegal procedure claiming to have suffered a hacking attack launched from North Macedonia. Days later this version changed and blame for the alleged attack was directed at Elon Musk. No evidence of any of this has been presented.

For the first time in a presidential election since the establishment of the electronic voting system in 2004, the result was not published in detail, disaggregating the information by the voting centre and polling station, as required by Venezuelan law.

The CNE only offered general and approximate figures. Still a week after the election, the results had not been made public.

Maduro opted to go to the Supreme Court of Justice, also under his control, to seek a judicial validation of the results. The center-left governments of Colombia and Brazil have joined the call for the publication of the full electoral result.

Nicolás Maduro's fraud foretold

The campaign of González has published about 80% of the tally sheets on a web page and claims to have obtained 67% of the votes in this partial recount, against 30% for Maduro. The CNE published a second bulletin broadening Maduro's lead, still without publishing detailed results.

In October 2023, the Venezuelan government had signed agreements with the US government and the traditional opposition which some analysts mistakenly took for guarantees of a competitive election.

The agreements allowed prisoner exchanges and the lifting of some of the US sanctions against Venezuela. For the Biden administration, it was about increasing the international oil supply without modifying the sanctions against Russia or Iran.

The genocidal Zionist attack against the Palestinian people in Gaza also increased fear of a rise in oil prices. For Maduro, the agreements offered additional income not only from oil but also from blood gold mining in the south of the country. An increase in the production of imperialist companies such as Chevron was encouraged.

Despite the nationalist rhetoric of the regime, the oil industry continues to be penetrated by US, European and Chinese capitals. In the context of the post-electoral crisis, Maduro has threatened to hand over the concessions that benefit US companies to companies from BRICS countries.

What was never on the Venezuelan government's agenda was the possibility of a peaceful handover of power, via elections. For the military in power, only an inability to repress could induce it to negotiate the conditions for its departure from power.

This was clear from the beginning. The government prevented the candidacy of María Corina Machado, who had won the primaries of that sector with more than 90% of the votes, as well as her designated successor, Corina Yoris.

On the other hand, the government allowed the presentation of numerous opposition candidacies that are not representative or in some cases are perceived as government puppets.

Finally, nine candidacies would compete with Maduro. Among them, Edmundo Gonzalez, a former Venezuelan Ambassador in Argentina during the first Chávez years, is now subordinate to Machado.

While the right could compete, the left was arbitrarily prevented from participating with an independent candidacy. Also during the campaign, there were numerous instances of intimidation and repression.

Chavismo: From hope to counterrevolution

Chavismo began its years in power amongst great expectations but did not undertake structural or anticapitalist changes, so its rather limited welfare policies depended on a sustained increase in oil prices.

When that cycle ran out the government responded by implementing an austerity program, in which inflation devoured wages and social investment was drastically cut.

After 14 years in power, with this model showing signs of exhaustion, Chávez died of a long illness in 2013 and designated Maduro as his heir.

In 2015, Chavismo received a crushing defeat in the parliamentary elections, obtaining barely one-third of the seats in the National Assembly, which would allow the opposition to even modify the constitution.

The government decided to de facto annul the parliament and not to hold competitive elections again. The dictatorial turn was consolidated with the repression of popular protests in 2017, with more than 160 people killed. From 2013 to 2024 more than seven million Venezuelans emigrated, almost one-fourth of the population.

The contrast could not be greater between the expectations of social justice and democratisation a quarter of a century ago and the current disaster.

Long before the destructive US financial and oil sanctions of 2017 and 2019, wages had been destroyed. The minimum wage is currently less than four dollars a month.

Union activity has been criminalised, indigenous peoples have been repressed, and leftist activists have been murdered.

Abortion is banned and gay people suffer arbitrary raids and arrests. The government that applies these reactionary policies labels itself as "socialist" but in fact represents a brutal and conservative capitalism run by the military and the powerful nouveau riche popularly known as the Bolibourgeoisie.

It's not surprising Maduro stated on several occasions before the elections that he represented a "civic-military-police" power and that if he lost there would be "a bloodbath". The threat has been fulfilled.

The political cycle of Chavismo was reflected in its international policy. After the failed coup d'état against Chávez backed by Bush in 2002, the Venezuelan government turned to an anti-imperialist discourse and relative political independence, its highest point was the justified breaking of diplomatic relations with Israel in 2009.

The limitations of this anti-imperialism were highlighted only two years later, in the face of the Arab Spring. Chávez turned his back on the rebellious peoples, even giving unconditional support to Assad's massacres. In the Caribbean region, Chavismo went from subsidising its neighbouring countries with oil loans to threatening to annex Guyana's Essequibo region.

The Venezuelan people, whose working-class youth is fighting the military dictatorship, are caught between the frying pan and the fire. Between a capitalist regime with a socialist mask, aligned with Russian and Chinese imperialism, and a pro-US opposition leadership that, in the case of Machado, openly supports Israel.

US imperialism supports that sector of the opposition while Russian imperialism supports Maduro, even with mercenaries on the ground since at least 2018. The left-wing opposition opposes the fraud and repression, standing in solidarity with the popular protest without endorsing the opposition right-wing parties and leaders

Amid the horror, there is still a reason for a shadow of hope: the will of hundreds of thousands of people to take to the streets despite the repression to try to take their destiny into their own hands.

Simón Rodríguez Porras is a Venezuelan Socialist and writer. He is the author of "Why did Chavismo fail?" and editor at Venezuelanvoices.org.

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