At first glance, it is an electoral tidal wave. Sunday evening November 21, President Maduro did not hide his satisfaction when at the stroke of half past midnight, he came to comment on the results of the 23 regional ballots and the municipal election in Caracas, the capital: “The revolutionary forces won in 21 out of 24 ballots and also in the capital Caracas! Great triumph, great victory, great harvest“, enthusiastically Nicolas Maduro, whose legitimacy is no longer recognized by fifty countries, mainly Western, since the last presidential election three years ago.
This time, his electoral victory is indisputable, especially since the ballot took place calmly and without apparent fraud. Success in the capital, Caracas, has symbolic value: Maduro’s party was represented there by a woman, Carmen Melendez. The European Union had been authorized to dispatch an observation mission for the first time in 15 years. She will not deliver her conclusions until Wednesday, November 23, but the head of mission has already welcomed the conduct of the vote.
There are at least three explanations for this success, when the opposition, three years ago, seemed poised to be able to overthrow Maduro’s authoritarian power. The first is that Maduro’s party, the Chavista party (named after its predecessor Hugo Chavez) retains a real electoral base, 20 to 25% of the 30 million Venezuelans. Conversely, second reason, the opposition is very divided. It is a patchwork that goes from the center-left to the extreme right. One figure gives the measure of this division: there were a total of 70,000 candidates in yesterday’s elections, 3,000 for the ruling party (in close ranks), 65,000 for the various opposition parties. And then Juan Guaido, who for a time embodied the alternative to Maduro, has lost its credibility by adopting positions that are not always very clear. Finally, the third reason: the authorities have made concessions and opened the door to negotiations with the opposition since last summer. Its image has therefore improved a little.
That said, nearly six in ten Venezuelans shunned the ballot box, the legitimacy of elected officials is therefore quite low. Here again, at least three reasons for this very high abstention: part of the opposition, the hardest, had called for a boycott of the ballot, considering that it is a parody of democracy serving to legitimize power; the population is disillusioned, especially preoccupied with making ends meet: inflation is rampant, with a dollar once again king and miserable wages; and finally six million Venezuelans have fled the country in recent years. It is therefore a trompe-l’oeil victory for the power of Maduro.