Venezuela goes to the polls today. This is an election which under normal circumstances would hold the same level of interest for Guyanese as one in Brazil or Colombia or Suriname, for example. But then the circumstances are not normal, and what happens to our west has potential implications for us directly. It should also be said that it could have consequences for other Latin states as well, and even for the US, since it could trigger a further exodus of Venezuelan citizens in circumstances where already nearly eight million of them have left their homeland.
Autocrats do not relinquish their hold on power easily, so there is considerable scepticism about whether President Nicolás Maduro will concede defeat if the vote goes against him, and provided it is reasonably free and fair there is every indication that it will. He has a lot to lose, and so do the people around him who are dependent on him remaining in power. He certainly has his hands on all the critical levers of state, so fraud would not present an overwhelming challenge if he decides he is not leaving office no matter what the result.
The ruling party holds 256 seats out of 277 in the National Assembly, whose President is Jorge Rodríguez, the brother of Delcy Rodríguez, the current Vice-President of the nation. It is the National Assembly which selects the members of Venezuela’s Supreme Court (the Supreme Tribunal of Justice) and its Electoral Council. As a consequence these two institutions are under Maduro control, and they have already played a role in relation to electoral matters.
In this election Mr Maduro faces two problems: one is that his party machine is weakened in comparison to what it used to be, and the second is that the opposition have achieved something they haven’t managed in years, namely, they have coalesced around a single candidate. That candidate is a stand-in for María Corina Machado who has been banned by the Electoral Council from standing in the election, a ban which the Supreme Court has refused to overturn. Undeterred, she still stood in a primary winning 93% of the more than 2 million votes cast.
Since she clearly couldn’t run herself, she named a substitute, Corina Yoris, to replace her, whom the Council promptly prevented from registering as a candidate. To this day, no reason has been given for this prohibition. If the government thought that this had dealt the main opposition an irreparable blow, it was soon to be disabused of the notion. Ms Machado then named Edmundo González Urrutia, a 74-year-old retired diplomat whom no one had ever heard of as a provisional candidate. Miraflores has allowed his candidacy to stand, possibly because initially it did not recognise the threat he represented.
The various opposition elements however eventually unified around his candidacy, and Ms Machado, the popular face of the opposition has campaigned for him up and down the country, attracting huge crowds even in formerly chavista areas. Despite all kinds of spiteful moves to interfere with the campaign, its impetus has not been thwarted. President Maduro is now facing the possibility of as much as a 40% lead for Mr González, according to some polls. All the usual tactics have been tried: 72 campaign workers, it has been reported, have been arrested since July, and less than two days before the vote polling centres in 13 states have been relocated. According to the Venezuelan press dozens of electoral irregularities have been denounced on social media.
And then there are the observers from a variety of sources nearly all of whom have been disinvited, including those from the EU and the Brazilian Senate. The Venezuelan authorities also prevented a plane from Panama carrying a number of ex-Presidents from Latin America from taking off to view the poll.
The only observers apart from Celso Amorim and possibly two others sent by Brazil’s President, will be four observers from the UN as well as a few from the Carter Center. The latter has already said that “given its limited size and scope, the Center’s mission will not conduct a comprehensive assessment of the voting, counting, and tabulation processes.” The opposition had no intention of relying on foreign observers anyway, and has now reportedly organised enough volunteers to cover almost all the polling stations in the country in order to monitor the count of paper ballot copies, and check on how many votes it has won.
It should be explained that electronic voting machines are what are used in Venezuela, and after a citizen has voted, a paper copy of their ballot is produced and placed in a box.
Since he is running out of options President Maduro has fallen back on his last resort – fear. He has warned of “civil war” if he loses, saying, “If you don’t want a bloodbath in Venezuela, a civil war brought about by the fascists, then let’s strive for the biggest success, the biggest victory in the electoral history of our people.
Brazil’s President Lula was alarmed. Last week he was quoted as saying, “I have told Maduro that the only chance for Venezuela to return to normality is to have a widely respected electoral process … I was scared by Maduro’s remarks that Venezuela could face bloodshed if he loses, Maduro needs to learn that when you win, you stay; when you lose, you leave.”
The problem is that Maduro has a lot to lose if he allows the opposition to win, and he is not the only one who will be afraid of reprisals if he goes out of power. Mr González particularly has been trying to assuage his fears repeatedly talking of “reconciliation”. Whether there have been any behind-the-scenes talks cannot be said, but it will take a lot of guarantees, one might have thought, to satisfy the President. In any case, he has more than embittered Venezuelans to worry about.
There is the US which has offered a US$15 million reward for his capture on “narcoterrorism” charges, while he is also under investigation at the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity committed by the security forces during the anti-government protests of 2017. When Reuters asked an American official whether Washington would be prepared to drop criminal charges against Mr Maduro to assist in negotiating a post-election exit if he loses, the agency was told the US could “consider measures that would facilitate a peaceful transition of power.” Whatever that means.
The thing about Venezuela is that no new government if elected, could take over immediately. That would not happen until early next year, which would leave the incumbent in place for several months. Whether or not that is a danger zone if the opposition wins is impossible to say.
Then there is the army, which has been busying itself building up military resources along the Cuyuni and on Ankoko with an eye to Guyana’s territory. General Padrino, Mr Maduro’s Defence Minister for ten years has said the military will respect the constitution, while Mr González has expressed trust that they will respect the result of the election today. Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. While there were various security agencies and the police out on the streets in 2017 to confront the protestors, the army per se was kept in barracks and showed no evidence of sympathy for them.
There really is not enough data in the public domain to know how Guyana plays into this story, although if it turns out to be the case that Mr Maduro is going to hang onto power, then we probably have more to fear than if the opposition wins. Maduro has already tried to play the Essequibo card, and he has not had the military stand down, Argyle notwithstanding. Have they been promised an Essequibo adventure? And will they insist on it even if Mr González accedes to office, although it really doesn’t sound like the kind of enterprise he would engage in.
The trends theoretically should become apparent this evening, because with electronic voting it does not take long for results to be announced. Certainly an inordinate delay will raise suspicions.
