KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
After months of fraught negotiations and diplomacy between the Maduro regime, Venezuela’s opposition and the international community, Venezuelans finally cast their votes in the country’s presidential elections this past Sunday. Polls had consistently shown opposition candidate Edmundo González on route toward a landslide victory — and data from election day revealed voters were poised to end more than a decade of President Nicolás Maduro’s grip on the country.
But mere hours after the polls closed, President Maduro declared victory. In asserting his claim to another six-year term, Maduro cited results from the Electoral Council that did not match either the exit polls or election observers’ reports. Opposition leaders and international leaders quickly demanded full transparency, but the Maduro-aligned Electoral Council has so far refused to release the complete results — making it nearly impossible to independently verify the opposition’s likely claim to victory.
USIP’s Keith Mines examines why the Maduro regime chose to hold an election in the first place, how both Maduro and the opposition have reacted to the election, and where Venezuelans who want change can go from here.
While there was widespread disappointment and outcry over the regime’s suspected manipulation of the vote count, this particular outcome should come as no surprise.
Maduro’s regime had been sending signals for months that it had no intention of ceding power as it came to terms with the fact that it would almost certainly lose to opposition candidate Edmundo González in an even marginally free and fair election.
But if that was the plan, why did the regime bother to hold elections at all? When the election was originally scheduled, it was part of a process that the regime hoped would result in some sanctions relief. And the Maduro regime also needed to go through the façade of an election to assuage many of its own supporters, especially the armed forces.
Meanwhile, the regime believed they could effectively split the opposition and — through some mild manipulation of the voting process — come out with an actual win in the election itself. What they did not factor in was the unity and national mobilization among the opposition that rallied behind González. This intense ground campaign was orchestrated, among others, by González’s primary backer: The very popular but stridently anti-Chavista Maria Corina Machado, who was prevented from running herself by the regime-aligned judiciary months ago.
As the election drew closer, the regime’s fears of defeat grew. And ultimately, there appears to have been simply too much uncertainty about where key regime figures, starting at the top with President Maduro, would end up in an opposition-led Venezuela. So, they decided the safest course of action (for themselves, at least) was to withhold the complete election results and claim an almost-certainly stolen victory.
Both sides reacted strongly after the vote. Maduro wasted no time in affirming his win the night of the vote, which was followed the next day by a rushed ceremony at the Electoral Council, where his victory was officially cemented.
The proceedings had all the trappings of ceremonial legitimacy, even as they lacked the real legitimacy that would have been apportioned by allowing for the vote to be counted openly and confirmed at the district level by the thousands of observers who were shut out of the process in the rush to judgement.
Meanwhile, the opposition originally called for restraint as they sought to exhaust all electoral and legal options. But as the day after the election day came to an end, there were few indications that the regime would reconsider — and few openings for international pressure, as the regime had already announced it was expelling the diplomatic missions of seven countries who had questioned its methods. On Monday night, Machado called for peaceful “citizen assemblies” to channel the protests in an orchestrated demonstration and keep putting pressure on the regime.
As the reality of six more years under Maduro's rule began to set in…demonstrations started to spontaneously emerge across the country.
However, the opposition’s original calls for restraint had already fallen flat among hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who saw this election as their final opportunity for change. As the reality of six more years under Maduro’s rule began to set in, it was simply too much, and demonstrations started to spontaneously emerge across the country in the immediate aftermath of the election.
All sides effectively exhausted their political capital coming into the election. At this point, the regime has lost all but a small part of its base, so it has only fear and very limited resources left to help it cling to power.
The opposition skillfully maneuvered through a very narrow window to mount an impressive campaign of mass electoral mobilization. But in the end, it did not have the capacity to overcome the regime’s control over the state and opposition leaders were not willing to negotiate on essential issues of justice and impunity for members of the regime.
The international community, especially the United States, supported the overwhelming desire of the Venezuelan people to vote by offering limited incentives to the regime. But they also stopped short of offering Maduro concrete incentives for his post-election survival that might have allowed for a more positive outcome.
All three will now return to the previous status quo — which in this case might end up being much harsher, similar to Nicaragua. It will mean increased repression and greater alignment with malign international actors for the regime; a return to harsh rhetoric, sanctions and increased international diplomatic isolation by the United States; and a return to the drawing board for the opposition. And it will mean more poverty and a mass migration for the Venezuelan people.
The one place where there is still energy is on the streets. Mass demonstrations are the only real pressure point left for the citizens of Venezuela, and they could organize a sustained, popular and nonviolent resistance to this blatant theft of their future.
Mass demonstrations are the only real pressure point left for the citizens of Venezuela.
But doing so will be more difficult than in the past. After the last mass demonstrations finally collapsed in 2017 after a full year of unrest, the regime built out a whole new security apparatus. This included popular militias, colectivos (neighborhood security bodies) and the National Guard — all forces that were both more brutal and more compliant with regime demands than the armed forces, who continue to see themselves as the protector of the constitutional order.
It is possible that Venezuelan citizens will endure these increased threats from the security forces, at least in the short term as tensions run high. But the challenge this time around will be sustaining such demonstrations on a massive scale for long enough that they draw in the armed forces to augment the various security bodies that are designed to put down popular demonstrations.
If the scale of peaceful demonstrations outruns the ability of the other bodies to manage them, and the armed forces are called in, it is possible their aversion to shooting on crowds would finally remove a key pillar of support from the regime and create a fresh opening for change. Maduro’s lack of popularity cuts through all societal levels, even within the military.
But it is a contest that will play out on a knife’s edge. There is also the nightmare scenario that after avoiding high levels of political violence for years, Venezuela could devolve into a spasm of killings — hence the need for tight discipline among demonstrators and their leaders. Already, several demonstrators were reportedly killed on Monday.