Nicolás Maduro claims implausible victory in Venezuela’s election

IT IS IN the nature of President Nicolás Maduro’s rule that the hardship and chaos to which he has reduced his country since coming to power in 2013 is hidden by a carefully curated display of jubilation at election time. Mr Maduro’s claim, after polls closed on July 28th, that he had won a third term in office was greeted by prompt fireworks displays in the capital, Caracas, and by jubilant crowds on hand to dance for the television cameras. With most of the vote supposedly counted, an election commission in thrall to the president claimed 51% of the vote for Mr Maduro, compared with 44% for the opposition candidate, Edmundo González.

The claim beggars belief. Mr Maduro is both unpopular and incompetent. His “Bolivarian revolution”, inherited from his late and similarly autocratic predecessor Hugo Chávez, promised prosperity and people power. Instead it has immiserated Venezuela, thanks to mismanagement of the state oil sector (the chief export earner), a throttling of private enterprise and rampant cronyism and corruption. The hyperinflation from earlier in Mr Maduro’s rule has eased, yet inflation still runs at an annual 50%. In the eight years to 2021 GDP fell by three-quarters. Once the richest country in South America, Venezuelans now struggle to scratch a living. So disastrously has Mr Maduro managed the economy that in the past decade about a quarter of the population has emigrated. (American sanctions have also been painful on the population.)

After the immiseration, now the disenfranchisement. The last election, in 2018, was a sham. This latest election steal easily trumps it for brazenness. Similar to before, the regime barred, on specious grounds, the most appealing opposition leaders from running—above all, María Corina Machado, a conservative critic of the government who won resoundingly in opposition primaries in October. Yet following that and similar setbacks, a usually fractious opposition rallied round the 74-year-old Mr González, an avuncular former diplomat. An urgent desire for change was palpable. Venezuelans flocked to opposition rallies while Mr Maduro relied on state workers to be bussed in. Opinion polls gave a huge lead to the opposition.

Certainly, by any reckoning but the regime’s, Mr González trounced the strongman on election night. Turnout was high, while the street-level intimidation that has marked Mr Maduro’s rule was relatively low (though a handful of opposition politicians have sought refuge for some weeks in the Argentine embassy). Abroad, from Montevideo to Madrid, Venezuelans gathered in public squares as the polls closed. The atmosphere was part vigil, part celebration.

Then the usual, ominous warnings of a stolen election began to emerge. There were triumphant early tweets from the president’s relatives. The defence minister, in military uniform, read out a statement on television about the imperative of maintaining peace and order. Opposition observers grew alarmed about big irregularities in the count. A six-hour delay in announcing the result was blamed by the electoral authority on “terrorists”. And then the authority declared a comfortable victory for Mr Maduro.

It was an outrageous claim. One exit poll by Edison Research, an international polling firm, put Mr González leading by 65% to 31%. The opposition swiftly rejected the results, claiming that Mr González had won with 70% of the vote, based on their own counts gathered from individual polling stations. Every polling station is meant to print out its own result, which is also sent electronically to the main country-wide count. These results must be available for the opposition to verify. That has not happened. The opposition says it has been able to obtain only about two-fifths of them. One NGO, which prefers to remain nameless for fear of retribution, has shared with The Economist photographs of the results from a representative sample of polling stations. Their sample suggests Mr González received 67% of the vote.

Some of the world’s nastiest regimes, among them China, Iran, Russia and Syria, were quick to congratulate Mr Maduro. The United States, the European Union and the UN raised grave concerns and demanded full transparency over the results. So did Chile’s principled (and left-wing) president, Gabriel Boric. The government of neighbouring Colombia at least immediately asked for more transparency. Brazil, perhaps the foreign actor with the greatest sway in Venezuela, was slow to react but has now also demanded detailed results to show how the numbers add up. That demand will hurt Mr Maduro, who in the past has counted on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to provide some cover.

What happens now is unclear. Mr Maduro has promised dialogue (yet, absurdly, his government has also accused Ms Machado of involvement in an alleged cyber attack that they say slowed down the results). Ms Machado insists she will “defend the truth” of an election won in reality by the opposition. As for Mr González, he declares that “We will not rest until the will of the people of Venezuela is respected…Lies have short legs.” Strikingly, however, he called for reconciliation rather than mass protests. He appears to want to avoid feeding the narrative Mr Maduro has spent much of the campaign inventing: that the opposition is bent on bringing chaos and violence. Regime insiders will say evidence of that is supported by the tyres set ablaze by opposition supporters on the way to the Caracas airport on July 29th, and the deafening sound of banging pots that has been ringing out over much of the capital.

Mr González appears to believe that the opposition’s best chance lies in trying to expose the election steal by obtaining more polling-station results. That could help convince wavering Venezuelans, above all in the armed forces, which have helped keep Mr Maduro in power. Certainly, should the army turn against Mr Maduro, the dynamics might change dramatically. “A message for the military: the people of Venezuela have spoken. They don’t want Maduro,” Ms Machado tweeted earlier. “It is time to put yourselves on the right side of history. You have a chance and it’s now.”

Yet the odds of a change of heart by the army are slim, especially now that Mr Maduro has hurriedly been declared the official election winner and president for another term even before full election results have been released. It is looking ever more likely that hope in Venezuela once again gets crushed. Ordinary Venezuelans will pay the price. The consequences will be felt right up to the southern border of the United States, where Venezuelans mass in search of a better future. One opinion poll ahead of the election said that as much as a third of the remaining population would consider migrating if Mr Maduro wins again. And now he brazenly claims he has. ■

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