Authoritarian Nicolas Maduro proclaimed elected with 51.2% of the vote by an electoral council at his beck and call, while the polls gave the opposition a clear lead… True, when pollsters misread the electoral mood, they often err. Except that in this case, everything indicates that they had read it correctly and that Maduro, who was hanging on, is therefore continuing to hang on in the face of a broader opposition than ever. That Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “serious doubts” about the validity of the presidential election results was in the order of things, given the determination with which the United States has sought for 25 years to thwart Caracas, from within and without. Otherwise credible is the perplexity that immediately manifested itself within the Latin American democratic left. “Difficult to believe” results, reacted Chilean President Gabriel Boric, whose hesitations to recognize Maduro’s election are also those of the governments of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico.
Observers and the opposition gathered around the candidacy of Edmundo González, of the Democratic Union Table (TUD), quickly pointed out that the vote was completely computerized, the results should have been released earlier. Absurdly, the government argued that it was an act of sabotage committed by the opposition – giving Venezuelans the old trick of system failure, a favorite weapon of poll manipulators in Latin America. A famous case: that of the left-wing candidate Cuauhtémoc Cardenas in Mexico, in 1988. In the wake of the Venezuelan election, suspicions of fraud were further exacerbated by the fact that the results from each polling station were not published, which should have been done.
Venezuela is a country and a people exhausted by a decade of recession, government mismanagement and corruption, mass emigration and, an unavoidable factor, US sanctions. The opposition boycotted the 2018 presidential election, but this time it managed to coalesce around a candidate, despite all the pitfalls set by the regime, bringing together in a common front the ultraliberal right and the radical left, as well as a growing number – which made all the difference – of those disappointed with Chavism, which Maduro continues to make his ideological bread and butter, eleven years after the death of the emblematic Hugo Chávez.
So much so that doubts will leave their mark and that, from the exercise, Maduro emerges more delegitimized and more isolated. Isolated on the international and regional scene. Delegitimized internally where the protest immediately spread to the streets in several cities of the country, with repression as a result.
The country lost 75% of its GDP between 2014 and 2020, hyperinflation reduced the standard of living to nothing, forcing nearly 8 million Venezuelans into exile, and the state, up to its neck in debt, can no longer provide its citizens with basic services. While the worst of the crisis is apparently over, the damage is done and done for a long time. The country will have progressed socially under Chávez, who came to power in 1999, and the voiceless found one in him. But by spending the oil windfall without counting, his “Bolivarian revolution” and socialist will have transformed into an authoritarian and clientelist enterprise. Maduro, supported by Beijing, has taken over.
Major failure: the regime will not have succeeded in getting the country out of the trap of the “resource curse”, in terms of using this windfall to diversify the national economy. How can the damage be repaired today? Venezuela is still sitting on the largest crude oil reserves in the world. It turns out that, behind its vociferations against the empire and the “fascists”, the Maduro regime, observers note, has begun to show itself to be more pragmatic on the economic level. For the sake of survival, of course. The economy has been liberalized, companies have been denationalized, public spending is more rigorously controlled. Fundamentally, the question remains: to what extent is it possible to prevent the country – whether the new Chavista ruling class remains in power or the heirs of the old right return to it – from falling into the same trap again and again?
The United States cannot be counted on to help him, as the predators that they are in Latin America. As in the case of Cuba, Joe Biden will have done nothing to undo the harsh financial and oil sanctions imposed on Venezuela under Donald Trump. Deadly sanctions by which governments remain and citizens suffer. Imperialist logic one day, imperialist logic always. The fact is that, under the cover of a falsely disinterested call for free elections, the White House explicitly supported the centrist González, when in fact he is the kind face of the ultraliberal Maria Corina Machado, a leading figure in the opposition that the authorities had banned from running for president.
The clear and immediate result of this call to the polls: Venezuela is going round in circles.