President Nicolas Maduro clings to power and passes law to muzzle opposition

Suspected of fraud to be re-elected in July 2024, President Nicolas Maduro faces protests that show no signs of abating. After deadly riots followed by violent repression, the president is tightening laws around freedom of opinion.

In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro, who claims victory in the July 28 presidential election, is trying by all means to cling to power. On Tuesday, August 20, he decided to have Parliament adopt a bill “against fascism,” a text deemed liberticidal by human rights defenders.

The government explains that this text takes up “the best of European laws relating to the phenomenon of Nazism and fascism”. This same power also promises, in the coming days, a law concerning social networks. The X network was even suspended for 10 days and President Maduro launched a boycott of the WhatsApp messaging service, accusing the two networks of inciting hatred.

The camp in power is holding on with force, and is bringing out the heavy artillery with the weapon of repression. Indeed, the opposition is sticking to its positions and still claiming victory. The opponent Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia was widely expected to win just before the elections, and the authorities declared the victory of the outgoing president with 52% of the vote, without providing an exact count or polling station reports, claiming to have been the victim of computer hacking.

Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia continues to claim victory with a vote won by more than 60% of the votes, according to him. He said “ready for dialogue” with the power in place, proposing to negotiate with Maduro for a democratic transition. He explains that Venezuelans are suffering from living in a country in crisis and without freedom. Finally, he believes that Maduro is only exacerbating the suffering of the people by clinging to power.

Moreover, the country has already experienced the scene recently, in 2019. The battle at the time was between President Maduro and the President of the National Assembly who had proclaimed himself interim president: Juan Guaido. The opposition had finally worn itself out, with little help from Western countries, which had changed their support according to the oil crisis. Supporting the opposition at the beginning of the crisis, they gradually moved closer to the power in place, particularly after the start of the war in Ukraine. Venezuela has oil and has some of the largest reserves in the world.

The subject is also seriously topical, with a huge oil spill currently affecting the northwest coast of Venezuela. It covers 225 square kilometers, which is the size of 37,000 football fields! Visible thanks to satellite images, it has consequences on fishing and tourism. The images are impressive, we can see a black ocean along the coast and huge balls invading the sandy beaches.

The state oil company Petroleos has not commented yet. But this is not the first time Venezuela has faced this kind of crisis. The dilapidated state of the facilities is to blame, as well as mismanagement and corruption. Production has fallen from 3 million barrels per day more than a decade ago to 1 million barrels per day today.

In this context, one may wonder whether the urgent need for the government is not to manage this ecological crisis that is spreading along its shores, rather than to silence the opposition and, above all, to oppress a population worn down by years of repression and dictatorship.