Maduro plays for time, seeks legal validation of ‘victory’
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report - 08 August 2024
Venezuela’s supreme court (TSJ) began the process of “certifying” the presidential elections this week, summoning each of the competing candidates, while investigating claims by President Nicolás Maduro and his coterie that there had been a foreign cyberattack orchestrated by the opposition to subvert democracy. The national electoral council (CNE) has handed to the TSJ the voter tally sheets which it has refused to publish and which the opposition maintains confirms the comprehensive victory of its candidate Edmundo González. Maduro is hoping that the TSJ’s adjudication will take time and lend a sheen of legitimacy to the CNE’s proclamation of his victory. But the TSJ is not independent. It is in Maduro’s pocket and can be relied upon to deliver the verdict he wants.
The TSJ issued a summons on 6 August for the 10 presidential candidates to appear before magistrates in the body’s electoral chamber in person. The president of the TSJ, Caryslia Rodríguez, a member of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), said failure to attend would result in unspecified “consequences”. The president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, a member of the PSUV and friend of Maduro’s, handed the voter tally sheets to the TSJ on 5 August, Rodríguez confirmed, even though they have not been published. His actions are highly irregular as the matter does not fall within the TSJ’s jurisdiction. The government claims it is necessary because of a cyberattack on the electoral process overseen by the opposition.
The TSJ has said it will spend up to 15 days looking into everything, with the option to extend this period, to draw up a report into the whole electoral process. Whatever conclusions it reaches will be favourable for Maduro, and he will treat them as imbuing the result with the credibility it currently lacks. Using the TSJ in this way is a tried and tested tactic for Maduro. But while Maduro is holding up the TSJ as the unimpeachable neutral arbiter described in the constitution, the opposition sees it for the unscrupulous politicised body that exists in reality.
González did not attend the TSJ summons on 7 August, saying that the magistrates would guarantee approval of “any initiative [Maduro] plans to take”. Instead, Manuel Rosales, the opposition governor of the north-western state of Zulia, appeared before the TSJ, where he called for the publication of the voter tally sheets withheld by the CNE. Enrique Márquez, a former CNE rector and former leader of the opposition party Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) who came a distant third in the presidential elections, according to the CNE, also appeared before the TSJ. Márquez accused the TSJ of usurping the functions of the CNE, arguing that it had no authority to look at the unpublished tally sheets. Maduro is scheduled to appear before the TSJ on 9 August.
Some supporters of the father of the Bolivarian Revolution and Maduro’s mentor, former president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), have also criticised the result and the ensuing repression, with more than 2,000 people arrested, according to Maduro, and more than 20 fatalities. Víctor álvarez, an economist and former basic industries minister under Chávez, argued that the lack of transparency and the violation of the chain of custody surrounding the electoral ballot papers and voter tally sheets meant that neither the publication of the tally sheets at this late stage nor the verdict of the TSJ would suffice to clear up doubts over the authenticity of the tally sheets.
On 6 August Oscar Figuera, the secretary general of the Partido Comunista de Venezuela (PCV), an estranged ally of the Maduro regime, accused the government of implementing “a policy of terror” and of equating the defence of popular sovereignty with being fascist. “Defending the constitution and the rule of law is not fascism,” Figuera said.
On 4 August a statement was released by dissident members of the PSUV, such as former communications and former finance ministers under Chávez, Andrés Izarra and Rodrigo Cabezas respectively, describing themselves as representatives of “the democratic left”, which denounced the response to legitimate protests against electoral fraud as “a wave of repression against popular sectors and political leaders seldom seen in our country’s history”. It urged Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, and Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to intercede to “put an end to the repression, the criminalisation of the protests and violation of human rights”. The statement said it was essential to find “a civic, peaceful, democratic, and constitutional way out of this serious crisis that is threatening the peace in our country”.
Presidents Lula, Petro, and López Obrador issued a statement on 1 August calling for the publication of the full voter tally sheets but stressing that “preserving social peace and protecting human rights must be the main priorities at this time”. It also called for “support for dialogue and accords to benefit the Venezuelan people”. Petro, not unreasonably given that Colombia has borne the brunt of the mass exodus of Venezuelan migrants in recent years, subsequently placed an emphasis on the need to avert “a humanitarian catastrophe” in Venezuela. Petro also pointedly responded to a social media post by María Corina Machado, the de facto leader of the Venezuelan opposition, by saying “it is not up to a foreign government to decide who Venezuela’s president is” and that he had to be respectful of Venezuela’s “self-determination”.
While none of the leaders were likely to trumpet any perceived progress from talks with the Venezuelan government for fear of jeopardising it, all of this sounded less like concerted diplomatic pressure exerted on Maduro to uphold the sanctity of democratic elections than it did support for a dialogue process. Maduro has shown time and time again that he welcomes dialogue when backed into a corner as an opportunity to play for time, burnishing his democratic credentials while steadfastly refusing to concede anything of consequence.
Meanwhile, Machado and González published an open letter on 5 August urging rank-and-file military and police officers to prevent a coup d’état by Maduro. They made an appeal to their consciences to “disobey illegal orders and recognise popular sovereignty expressed at the polls” and to come out on the side of the Venezuelan people and their own families. The statement denounced “a brutal offensive against democratic leaders, [electoral] witnesses and even against the common people, with the absurd objective of wanting to conceal the truth”. The letter offered guarantees to those fulfilling their constitutional duty but vowed that there would be no impunity.
The letter echoed similar appeals by Juan Guaidó in 2019 as he desperately sought to win over the armed forces to support his interim presidency and remove Maduro after declaring his last re-election in 2018 to be illegitimate, but they mainly stayed loyal then and the fate of those that did not are a deterrent to those who might be tempted to rise up now. The problem is that while some of the rank-and-file may well sympathise they too face brutal repression for any hint of dissent from the military counter-intelligence agency Dgcim and make up the majority of political prisoners in Venezuela. The top brass, meanwhile, numbers over 2,000, dwarfing that of the US, a global superpower, and has a vested interest in buttressing the regime.
Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino López duly read out a statement issued by the military high command on 6 August in response to Machado and González in a broadcast on state television. “The Bolivarian national armed forces [FANB] and police forces…emphatically reject the desperate and seditious approach…by [González and Machado],” Padrino López read. He said it was offensive that they had appealed to military and police officers, inciting them “to disobey the law” and trying to “crack the unity of the military and police high command”, which it would “never manage”. He claimed that the elections had been carried out with “the highest standards of transparency” and accused the opposition coalition Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD) of “a wave of terrorism”.
The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, promptly announced that he would investigate González and Machado for allegedly “inciting insurrection” through their appeals to the armed forces and police. Machado responded with a recorded message uploaded to social media on 6 August. “Fear will not paralyse us, we will overcome it and we will not leave the streets,” she insisted. Machado accused Maduro of trying to terrorise the Venezuelan people and stop them communicating with each other; Maduro has called for people to stop using the WhatsApp messaging service and denounced TikTok and Instagram as mediums for spreading hate this week.
Machado also announced on 6 August that María Oropeza, head of González’s campaign team in the western state of Portuguesa, had been arbitrarily arrested. Oropeza released a video on Instagram as her door was being broken down. “I am not a criminal, I am only one more citizen who wants a different country”, she said, before people burst in to the room and confiscated her phone. Machado’s Vente Venezuela (VV) party said Oropeza had been “kidnapped” by Dgcim agents who had broken into her home without an arrest warrant.
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Colombia getting ready
Colombia’s Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo met local politicians to discuss the possible impact of mass migration from Venezuela in Riohacha, the capital of the border department of La Guajira, on 6 August. A quarter of?La Guajira’s 1.2m inhabitants are currently Venezuelan migrants, according to the departmental governor?Jairo Aguilar Deluque.?President Petro warned that “a humanitarian catastrophe in Venezuela becomes a humanitarian catastrophe in Colombia”. Colombia’s former vice president Germán Vargas Lleras, the leader of the right-of-centre opposition Cambio Radical (CR) and a fierce critic of Petro’s, said that there would be “an avalanche of millions of Venezuelans who after this mockery of an election will have lost all hope of change”.
Cabello calls for radicalisation
Bolivarian strongman Diosdado Cabello insisted that the Venezuelan government would not be deterred by the threat of tightened sanctions. Quite the contrary. Cabello said the government would “not capitulate under any circumstance”. Instead, he said it would preside over “the radicalisation of the Bolivarian Revolution to hand power to our people”.
Rift emerges between Kirchnerismo and Madurismo
The reaction to Venezuela’s electoral debacle has been particularly interesting in Argentina. The response of President Javier Milei, accusing the Maduro government of stealing the election, was entirely predictable, but far less expected was the reaction of former president Cristina Fernández (2007-2015) on 3 August. Fernández called for the publication of the voter tally sheets “for the sake of the legacy of Hugo Chávez himself”. The leader of Argentina’s human rights organisation Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo, Estela de Carlotto, who like Fernández was a close ally of Chávez, went further. In a radio interview on 5 August, De Carlotto said “it can clearly be seen that [Maduro] has cheated…he will be a dictator…he is offending the memory of Chávez”.
Leaving aside this rose-tinted view of Chávez, who never needed to resort to electoral fraud like Maduro but was scarcely a model democrat, exhibiting all the traits of a classic authoritarian populist strongman, this criticism will have stung. The vice-president of the PSUV and Bolivarian strongman, Diosdado Cabello, responded indirectly to Fernández on his weekly television programme Con el mazo dando on 4 August saying that “the legacy of Chávez is in good hands”. He then proceeded to savage Fernández’s record and stewardship of the Peronist movement. “Why is Milei in Argentina? Weakness betrayed the legacy of [Néstor] Kirchner [Fernández’s late husband and predecessor] and [Juan Domingo] Perón and their own people, and they want to cast aspersions at Venezuela,” Cabello said.
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