After protests over a stolen election, the goons crack heads
ONLY ONE reason prevails for why Nicolás Maduro ever became Venezuela’s president. It was not his skill at winning elections. Nor his willingness to steal them. It was certainly not his oratory. It was simply that his charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chávez, who had cancer, appointed him as heir. In the build-up to Venezuela’s latest presidential election, held on July 28th (Chávez’s 70th birthday), a video of the late populist announcing his decision, in 2012, was broadcast repeatedly as a kind of talisman.
Had he known the appalling consequences, would the caudillo really have chosen Mr Maduro? So disastrous has been his rule over the past 11 years that both men have now become targets of national opprobrium. In an orgy of iconoclasm the day after the president stole an election he could never have fairly won, symbols of the Chávez era were targeted, including at least five statues of the late leader torn from their pedestals to euphoric cheers. The crowds were eager that the Maduro government be the next to fall. Pink election posters featuring a beaming Mr Maduro were ripped from street lamps and trampled underfoot. The protests were everywhere, from the slums of Caracas, the capital, to Valle Lindo, a neighbourhood in Anzoátegui state that traditionally has been deeply loyal to the regime. Predictably, Mr Maduro sent his goons onto the streets while his propagandists perpetuated lazy caricatures: those protesting were all pampered members of the middle class, or drug addicts, or vandals. The claims were denied by the protesters themselves. “We’re not the rich. This is the ‘hood!”, chanted one group in the capital’s working-class district of Petare. At least seven people, including one soldier, were dead by the night’s end (as The Economist went to press, about 20 had died, mostly at the hands of security forces or pro-government thugs).
A day earlier optimism had risen. Venezuelans voted in what seemed like the best and possibly last chance to rid the country of the despot. Everyone knew that from the outset the process was skewed in Mr Maduro’s favour. The most popular opposition candidate, the conservative María Corina Machado, the winner of earlier opposition primaries, was banned on specious grounds from taking part. Her stand-in was Edmundo González, a mild-mannered former diplomat. Mr Maduro had blanket access to a captive media; Mr González was denied that luxury.
Ms Machado, who in 2002 set up a charity which specialised in vote-monitoring, made diligent preparations in advance for possible fraud. The opposition recruited thousands of election witnesses and deployed them at the country’s nearly 16,000 polling stations. Their key task was to keep a record of the actas, or voting receipts, which election machines print out before transmitting the results to the national electoral commission. As polls closed, people began to hope a little. “I dared believe my first ever vote would count,” said Arturo Silva, a 19-year-old student in Caracas.
It did not. When the apparatchik at the head of the electoral authority, Elvis Amoroso, announced the results, they bore no resemblance either to opinion polling before the vote, or to exit polls, or to a quick count of 30% of the actas conducted by the opposition. Mr Maduro, Mr Amoroso declared, had won 51.2% of the vote compared with 44.2% for Mr González. To date, the authority has not even published a breakdown of results from each polling station. Mr González and Ms Machado cried fraud and have evidence to back the claim. Their teams have collected copies of 81% of the actas, showing that Mr González defeated Mr Maduro in a landslide—perhaps 67% of the votes to Mr Maduro’s 30%.
The regime’s response to being called out is, preposterously, to accuse the opposition itself of massive fraud. The authorities claim that Ms Machado commissioned a cyber-attack, originating from North Macedonia, in an attempt to alter the vote. The Carter Centre, a non-profit organisation founded by Jimmy Carter, a former American president, issued a scathing preliminary report on July 30th after sending monitors to the election. It stated that Venezuela’s electoral process both failed to meet “international standards of electoral integrity” and flouted “numerous provisions” of the country’s own laws. The administration of President Joe Biden expressed “serious concerns” about the regime’s claim of victory.
Dark times lie ahead. Hours before the Carter Centre’s report was released, Mr Maduro began arresting opposition figures, including Freddy Superlano, a party leader, who was filmed being bundled into the back of a car by masked men outside his home in Caracas. Jorge Rodríguez, who is head of the national assembly and, with the vice-president, Delcy Rodríguez (his sister), among the most powerful figures in the ruling clique, brands both Mr González and Ms Machado as “fascists” and demands their imprisonment. Meanwhile Mr Maduro urges pro-regime snoops to report protesters, via a government app.
Some protests may continue, but in a country where 7m, about a quarter of the population, have emigrated over the past decade, many lack the energy to fight any more. Besides, says one resident of Petare, “They have the weapons.” Phil Gunson of the International Crisis Group, a think-tank, says that it is unlikely that protests alone can unseat Mr Maduro.
A final hope might be the army. For the time being it remains loyal. Venezuela has among the most top-heavy armed forces in the world, with around 2,000 generals and admirals, or twice as many as in the far larger United States. Thanks to Mr Maduro’s crony capitalism, they have been allowed to get rich, while those suspected of wavering are ruthlessly punished. Members of the armed forces make up about half of the country’s 300-odd political prisoners, as classified by Foro Penal, a legal assistance group in Caracas.
A handful of the region’s democracies still wield some influence over Mr Maduro and his regime. Brazil is probably best placed to try to deflect Venezuela from becoming an even grimmer dictatorship. Yet following private conversations with both Mr Maduro and Mr González, the chief foreign-policy adviser to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Celso Amorim, declared to the Guardian newspaper on July 30th: “I am worried. I am leaving here worried.” The United States and countries in the region, bracing for more Venezuelans fleeing abroad, are right to be too.■
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