Nicolás Maduro digs in with the help of a pliant Supreme Court
One month after President Nicolás Maduro brazenly stole an election, the consequences still reverberate across Venezuela and the region. Border posts with Brazil teem with people desperate to leave. Inside the country thousands who protested have been targeted by a regime that is now openly hunting down its critics, even as all the major democracies in the region have either rejected the result or called for an impartial audit.
That will never happen. Everyone knows the clear winner of the election was Edmundo González, a former diplomat and the stand-in for the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was banned from running. The indelible evidence of his victory is the paper receipts from more than 25,000 voting machines, four-fifths of the total, which the opposition obtained and published online. These show Mr González won 67% of the vote, to Mr Maduro’s 30%. The regime tried to make its victory look legitimate by asking the Supreme Court, which it controls, to validate it. State television broadcast masked officials opening election boxes and perusing supposed vote receipts. On August 22nd the pantomime concluded with the court endorsing as “definitive” the original official result, which gave a comfortable victory to Mr Maduro.
In all probability he will begin his third six-year term on January 10th. Assuming he does, he will rule as a dictator. The brutal tactics used in the past month are a bitter foretaste. More than 2,400 people were arrested in the 16 days after the vote, according to the government. Some 24 were killed in the demonstrations, mostly by gunfire, reported Provea, a rights group. Rather than express regret, the regime has labelled its opponents and the journalists and poll workers it is locking up as “terrorists” and “fascists”. Mr González himself may face imprisonment. The attorney-general is investigating him for “usurpation” among other things. The former diplomat remains in hiding.
A regional diplomatic push for the regime to compromise with the opposition is making little headway. Diplomats need to convince not just Mr Maduro but also his closest confidants, who were given yet more power in a reshuffle on August 27th. They are deeply implicated in the regime’s crimes but some are even less likely to end up with amnesty than Mr Maduro is, making compromise less appealing.
Aside from his wife and his son, Mr Maduro’s inner circle is made up of four people. All are under sanctions from the United States government. Vladimir Padrino López, the defence minister who commands the army, could in theory force the president to step down. But he is a diehard loyalist, in part because he is understood to benefit from a web of companies and properties both in and outside Venezuela. He has been indicted by American prosecutors for drug-trafficking. The Venezuelan government denies all the charges against him and other senior figures.
The other military man is Diosdado Cabello, an army captain who is vice-president of the ruling party and has just been promoted to interior minister. He is alleged to be one of the richest and most powerful men in the country, lording over a network of military and civilian contacts which he first developed as a close ally of the late president, Hugo Chávez. The United States government has offered $10m for information leading to his arrest in relation to allegations of drug-trafficking and narco-terrorism.
The head of the national assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, and his sister, Delcy Rodríguez, the vice-president who was recently also made oil minister, complete the inner cabinet. Their father was a Marxist who died in 1976 after being tortured by security men. Mr Rodríguez has previously led talks with the opposition and the United States. He also serves as the government’s chief propagandist, recently promoting the lie that the opposition-collated electoral tallies were forgeries.
Ms Rodríguez, who studied in Paris in her 20s, has been presented as the acceptable face of the regime to foreign governments and even mooted as a possible presidential candidate. Before the election, diplomats in Caracas, the capital, would ponder how both she and her brother, who seemed so intransigent on television, were so charming and reasonable in person. The limits to that charm are now clear. They, and other close allies, have shown themselves prepared to defy the will of the people and let Venezuela suffer—because it suits them. ■
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