Two days ago there were rival demonstrations in Venezuela to mark one month since the July 28 election which all the evidence indicates President Nicolás Maduro lost quite resoundingly. He still insists that he won, and at the government rally on the anniversary he told his red-clad supporters: “Does Venezuela want a civil war? It will be resolved with laws, with justice, with the established order, that is how it has been, that is how it will be.”
Even although a month has passed with no sign of the head-of-state conceding, Opposition Leader Maria Corina Machado appears confirmed in her belief that peaceful street protests and international pressure could yet depose Mr Maduro.
It has to be said that as far as the international community goes there are limits to what it can do. Venezuela has been under economic sanctions for years and Caracas has remained totally unmoved by the hardships endured by its population or the fact that nearly eight million of them have migrated. Mr Maduro has been something of a pariah in the Western world for a long time, but has found fellowship with a group of autocratic nations also under sanctions like Cuba, Russia, Iran and North Korea, some of whom have also helped him evade certain economic embargoes.
Venezuela’s heavyweight allies on this continent, Brazil and Colombia, and for a time Mexico too, have been trying to negotiate some kind of solution to the political issue, but their continued insistence that the Electoral Council produce tallies of Mr Maduro’s win, polling station by polling station, has brought that process to a standstill.
And then there is the matter of peaceful street protests. Ms Machado has been at great pains to emphasise to her supporters that these must be peaceful, because violence plays into the hands of the state. She is absolutely right about this. In addition, it might be mentioned that Marcel Dirsus of Kiel University in Germany has written that non-violent uprisings, if they succeed, are nearly ten times more likely to remove dictators than violent ones. The rate he gives is 57% to 6%.
But then there is the matter of the frequency and intensity of the protests themselves. At the beginning of this month Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh with a political report card similar to Maduro’s but with an altogether more vibrant economy, was forced to flee into exile. This followed weeks of protests characterised by violence, particularly on the part of the government, but despite this hundreds of thousands came out to demonstrate and in the end they could not be dissuaded by bullets; they were prepared to face down armed police. It is thought the army exerted some pressure on Sheikh Hasina to leave because their ranks would not want to fire on civilians if they were brought out to confront protestors.
Venezuelan protestors are not going to face down the bullets because they have an alternative exit strategy – migration. The Bangladeshis for the most part had nowhere else to go. In addition to this, our neighbours are not coming out into the street day after day, only every now and then when Ms Machado calls them out, and on that basis over time their numbers will decrease. While the news agencies have not spelt this out specifically, the distinct impression is being conveyed that on August 28 far fewer opposition people protested than on the previous occasion.
Venezuela has a number of different security forces including the National Guard, all of which have been used to suppress demonstrations before, save one. This is the Bolivarian National Armed Force or FAN, as the acronym of the army proper is known. According to an article in the Financial Times based on information from former military officers, after the failed 2002 coup Hugo Chávez reorganised the armed forces and security services “replacing the army’s vertical commands with a system of axes and spokes that distributed power among large numbers of generals … making it difficult for the military to challenge the president.”
There are regular promotions for loyalty, and the military plays a role in managing the oil industry and illegal mining. It might also be noted that Mr Maduro has purged groups in the army, particularly the office corps. Any hope that Ms Machado and Mr Edmundo González might have of backing from the military, therefore, may possibly be overly sanguine.
Ms Machado has said that the President is weak. That is true, but weak people resort to terror tactics to maintain themselves in power, which is what he has been doing. It has been reported among other things that more than 2,400 people have been arrested since July 29 and 25 killed. Human rights organisations and their members have been a particular target.
And for those who wonder what this all has to do with Guyana, it should be noted that while this is playing out, a special commission of the National Assembly is hard at work drafting a constitution for our Essequibo. El Universal reported two days ago that three of the five titles for the bill have already been approved, and that they were working on several proposals for flags, coats of arms and anthems for the state of “Guayana Esequiba” which will identify the ‘new country.’ The fact that this is risible does not mean that it is not potentially threatening, particularly when taken together with the military build-up in the Cuyuni.
In other words Mr Maduro hasn’t abandoned his ambitions, and depending on the political situation in which he finds himself may yet set them in motion; he is just preparing the groundwork in case he needs to do so. It is another possible instrument in his toolkit to keep himself in power. From our point of view a González presidency is far more likely to follow procedures at the ICJ than embark on adventurism.
After the initial alarm last year, the government here seems to have forgotten all about the issue, soothed by the thought we have the backing of the US, Britain and France. But while Caracas is not likely to take on oil platforms, which might well trigger a US response, it is very unlikely that anyone would come to our aid with boots on the ground if Venezuela moved to occupy our mining areas. The US Southern Command has certainly helped with well-publicised co-operation with the GDF such as was announced yesterday, but whether in the end this would be enough to dissuade a desperate and not fully rational Venezuelan president is impossible to say.
In the meantime our government should be implementing a sensitisation strategy with the public, so when we read that Venezuela is writing a constitution for Essequibo it does not think we are indifferent. It is telling that the government here could not even be bothered to inform citizens with a press release in June that the ICJ had given Guyana until the 9 December 2024 for its reply to Venezuela’s counter-memorial and until the 11 August 2025 for Venezuela’s rejoinder. The government in George-town needs to keep the public better informed.
