Machado makes desperate appeal to armed forces as hope fades
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report - 17 October 2024
Venezuela’s opposition figurehead María Corina Machado urged the Bolivarian armed forces (FANB) this week not to prop up “a regime that is on the way out”. Machado said that “after nearly three months neither the CNE [national electoral council] nor the TSJ [supreme court] nor [President Nicolás] Maduro have been able to show a single shred of evidence that they won the election - because they lost”. It is not the first time that Machado has sought to reach out to the FANB in the wake of July’s presidential elections but, in the absence of international diplomacy exerting any meaningful pressure, she is struggling to keep alive the slender hope of the opposition amid what the United Nations independent international fact-finding mission (FFMV) on Venezuela described in a report released this week as “the harshest and most violent form of repression in order to silence political opponents or persons perceived as such”.
In an audio published on social media on 13 October, Machado appealed to soldiers in the FANB to “search your conscience”, adding “where is the sense in giving up your career and reputation to sustain a government with no future?” She went on: “How many times have your loved ones remonstrated with you for continuing to support a tyrant that has done so much damage to all of us? We know that every day they try to scare you, saying that when the democrats come to power they will move against the national armed forces and against you and that you have no future with us: this is false”.
Machado’s appeal faces the longstanding problem that the FANB, explicit in its very name, is not an independent apolitical entity but complicit with the regime. The FANB hierarchy swore an oath of “absolute loyalty and subordination” to Maduro after the elections, with the defence minister, General Vladimir Padrino López, describing opposition claims of a stolen election as “truly absurd”. The ordinary soldier to whom Machado directed her appeal is also in an invidious position; the military counter-intelligence agency (DGCIM), ably supported by Cuba, has repeatedly snuffed out any hint of unrest within the military before.
Maduro confirmed Padrino López in his position this week. He also retained General Domingo Hernández Lárez as head of the strategic operational command (CEO), but made several changes to the top brass, including Major General Johan Alexander Hernández Lárez taking over as the new army commander. Significantly, he also replaced the head of the DGCIM, Iván Hernández Dala, with Major General Javier Marcano Tábata, and Gustavo González López, the head of the Bolivarian intelligence agency (Sebin) with Major General Alexis Rodríguez Cabello. “These changes will strengthen the cohesion, organisation, discipline and capacity of Venezuela to defend itself,” Maduro said, in a message on social media, with an accompanying video of his visit to the military academy in Caracas where he announced them, with no indication as to how the outgoing leadership had been found wanting in that regard.
The two replaced generals presiding over Venezuela’s intelligence services had held their positions for more than a decade. Both men were mentioned in a searing 158-page indictment of the Bolivarian regime published by the UN’s FFMV on 15 October, which accused the DGCIM and Sebin of being “massively involved in the perpetration of violations and crimes, mainly arbitrary detentions; excessive use of force to repress protests, sometimes in collaboration with civilian armed groups; cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment; as well as sexual and gender-based violence” during the “unprecedented” crackdown that followed the elections. They have also both been sanctioned by the US government.
However, sanctions tend to be worn as badges of honour by Bolivarian officials, who close ranks, and Maduro has not been influenced by criticism from the UN before. After the FFMV’s mission was extended for a further two years on 11 October by the UN Council on Human Rights, “to enable the mission to continue to investigate gross violations of human rights committed since 2014, with a particular focus on…the lead-up to, during and after the 2024 presidential elections”, the Venezuela delegation said the Maduro government did not recognise “mandates imposed under the selective and politicised criteria of double standards”, adding that “Western countries insist on turning the Council into an instrument for coercion and blackmail, a court of the inquisition”.
The changes at the DGCIM and Sebin look intended rather to strengthen the power and influence of Bolivarian strongman Diosdado Cabello, who was appointed as interior and justice minister in August. Rodríguez Cabello, the new head of Sebin, for instance, is a cousin of Cabello’s.
Meanwhile, Machado’s assertion that the report is “crucial” and will increase “the regime’s ever-growing isolation” also looks like clutching at straws. Previous reports have said much the same and made little difference. The only critical voices that would have slightly concerned the Maduro government were Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro. But after refusing to recognise Maduro’s victory without the publication of voter tally sheets and urging dialogue with the opposition, both heads of state have fallen silent. When quizzed on the matter by the media on the sidelines of the inauguration of Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico on 1 October, Lula merely talked nebulously about needing “to find a way to renew democratic dialogue”.
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It was a sign of how little pressure Lula has exerted to discomfort the Maduro government, refraining from even mentioning Venezuela during his address to the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) last month, that after Venezuela’s attorney general, Tarek William Saab, said in an interview on Globovisión television on 14 October, that “Lula has been turned by the CIA”, the foreign minister, Yván Gil, publicly dressed down Saab. Gil said Saab’s comments had been made “in a very personal capacity and in no way reflect the position of the executive, which is responsible for Venezuela’s foreign policy”. A chastened Saab sought to claim that his comments had been twisted by “a campaign orchestrated by foreign media” (although he had gone into detail, elaborating a “theory” that Lula was turned during his 18 months in prison in 2018-2019).
The TSJ, meanwhile, slammed the door shut on any hopes of the release of voting tallies on 11 October. The TSJ’s constitutional chamber upheld a resolution by the TSJ’s electoral chamber, saying the elections had been carried out “in an impeccable manner with due guarantees which [had proven] the unobjectionable integrity” of the CNE’s bulletin proclaiming Maduro the victor. Enrique Márquez, who finished a distant third in the elections and filed the suit, accused the TSJ of “a massive abnegation of its institutional responsibilities”.
Venezuela offers to mediate
“After a long debate over the serious situation that Colombia is enduring, Venezuela has proposed its mediation…to facilitate a broad dialogue in our brother country to promote stability and peace,” Colombia’s foreign minister, Yván Gil, said in a statement last week. Gil’s tongue-in-cheek statement followed Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro’s claim last week that a coup was being orchestrated by the opposition to drive him from power, after the national electoral council (CNE) announced it would launch a formal investigation on the suspicion that his electoral campaign in 2022 exceeded spending limits [WR-24-40]. The Venezuelan government rarely misses an opportunity to try and seize upon any perceived challenges to democracy elsewhere in the region and its offer of mediation comes after Petro’s call for a dialogue process with the opposition in the wake of Venezuela’s elections.
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