Green Left’s Kerry Smith sat down with Latin American politics writer Federico Fuentes to break down the July 28 Venezuelan presidential elections and its aftermath.
Fuentes is a regular Green Left contributor, was part of its Caracas bureau between 2005—10 and co-authored Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions.
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Could you give some background to what was at stake in Venezuela’s recent election?
There were at least two issues at stake: first, the direction Venezuela would head politically; and second, whether some form of institutional politics could be restored inside the country and some legitimacy restored to its government outside the country.
Both need to be placed within the framework of the Venezuelan people’s attempt over more than two decades to construct a democratic alternative to capitalism — and the violent opposition to this project unleashed by the United States and local elites.
In terms of the first issue, the choice was self-evident.
On one hand, you had the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro, successor to former president Hugo Chávez who was associated with a period of large-scale oil wealth redistribution and experiments in democratic people’s power.
Unlike Chávez, Maduro has presided over the past decade of deep economic crisis, crushing poverty and rising repression, including against elements of the left.
On the other hand, you had Edmundo González, a career diplomat from the pre-Chávez period who was backed by the majority of the right-wing opposition and the US.
Many view González as a figurehead for María Corina Machado, the opposition’s preferred candidate, but who is disqualified from holding office until 2038. Machado represents the far right of Venezuelan politics, having close affinities with former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, former Colombian president Álvaro Uribe and current Argentine president Javier Milei.
The second issue was whether some institutionality and legitimacy could be restored in light of the opposition’s constant attempts to remove Chávez and Maduro from power and its policy since 2016 of openly ruling out participating in elections.
This policy led the opposition to form a parallel government in 2019, proclaiming Juan Guaido “interim president”. It was lent a certain legitimacy by the US and its allies, however Guaido’s “interim presidency” had no institutional power within Venezuela. Its failure largely forced the US and opposition back to the negotiating table.
Those talks, though not without setbacks, led to some positive advances, including some relief from the punishing sanctions imposed by the US and an agreement by the opposition to participate in the presidential elections.
Yet the corporate media overwhelmingly decried the elections as illegitimate. Why?
This is not the first time. Each time Chávez and his party won an election, the cries of fraud became louder — except, of course, when the opposition won, as it did with the 2007 constitutional reform and the 2015 National Assembly elections.
What the corporate media refuse to acknowledge — because it cuts against this long-running narrative — is that Venezuela’s electoral system is, technically speaking, among the most transparent in the world.
So, it should be clear cut who won?
Yes, but there is a problem: the National Electoral Council (CNE) has not published its official tally sheets, as it is legally bound to do.
Once the electronic and manual tallies from every polling booth are double checked by local party observers, those tallies are centralised, with a copy of the tally from each polling station signed by all witnesses and handed to party observers.
The opposition claims the tally sheets its observers collected demonstrate González won.
The disagreement could be clarified by the CNE publishing the official tally sheets. This would enable independent verification of the results.
Why has the CNE not released its tally sheets?
The CNE says it has been the victim of hackers. But this did not stop it counting votes between July 28 and August 2, when it released its updated results. Moreover, following Maduro’s request that the Supreme Court investigate the election results, the CNE handed tally sheets to the court.
So, the booth by booth tallies are there, it is simply the CNE not abiding by its legal requirement. With each day that the CNE fails to publish them, doubts grow about the result.
What has been the response in Venezuela?
Predictably, the opposition and its supporters have cried fraud. But they are not the only ones: protests have occurred in poorer neighbourhoods that were once Chavista bastions and various radical left groups, such as the Communist Party of Venezuela, have demanded the tally sheets be published.
In response, the government announced it had arrested more than 2000 protesters (the UN has verified at least 1200 such arrests). This speaks to the scale of the protests and depth of repression.
What about outside Venezuela?
Predictably, the US and its allies have denounced the election result, though the US backtracked from its initial stance of recognising González as Venezuela’s new president-elect.
What is interesting is the stance taken by the centre-left governments of Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. All three are — to varying degrees — Maduro allies, strongly oppose foreign interference in Venezuela’s domestic affairs, and know the serious threat that the far right poses to democracy in the region.
Operating as a bloc, the three issued an August 1 statement that expressed “solidarity with the Venezuelan people, who turned out en masse to vote on July 28 to define their own future” and “call[ed] on the Venezuelan electoral authorities to move forward quickly and publicly release the data broken down by polling station.”
In a follow up August 8 statement, they reiterated the CNE should “present the results of the presidential elections … broken down by voting table” and “reaffirm[ed] the convenience of allowing impartial verification of the results, respecting the fundamental principle of popular sovereignty”.
They said they were willing to contribute to any democratic transition, and added “their conviction and confidence that solutions to the current situation must come from Venezuela”.
Also of note are the findings of the Carter Center, which the CNE invited to observe the elections and has previously defended the integrity of Venezuela’s electoral system in the face of claims of fraud.
It issued a statement on July 30, declaring it “cannot verify or corroborate the results of the election declared by the National Electoral Council (CNE), and the electoral authority’s failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles”.
To this we can now add the August 14 release of an interim report by a UN Panel of Experts invited to Venezuela to follow the elections.
Its preliminary conclusions found “the results management process of the CNE fell short of the basic transparency and integrity measures that are essential to holding credible elections. It did not follow national legal and regulatory provisions, and all stipulated deadlines were missed.
“In the experience of the Panel, the announcement of an election outcome without the publication of its details or the release of tabulated results to candidates has no precedent in contemporary democratic elections.”
How can the left respond?
We should continue to reject foreign interference in Venezuela. No country can abrogate for itself the right to decide who governs another country. Moreover, as long as there are sanctions on Venezuela, no election can be truly fair.
But sanctions are no excuse for a lack of democracy and transparency. Moreover, campaigning to lift the sanctions is vital not just in terms of their crushing humanitarian toll but their political impacts — which are evident if we are honest about the Maduro government today.
While the combination of an insurrectional opposition, a hostile National Assembly, crippling sanctions, falling oil prices and a dire economic crisis failed to shift Maduro from the presidency, it did shift the government away from Chávez’s “21st century socialism” project.
Increasingly, Maduro’s goal has been to simply hold onto power. In retreat, his government has sought to do this by combining concessions to (sections of) the right with co-option and repression of the grassroots left.
The result has been economic policies not too dissimilar to those of neoliberal governments in the region, which have largely benefited economic and political elites (old and new) while leaving Venezuelan workers with the lowest wages in Latin America.
More importantly, the government has drastically reduced the scope for people’s participation in everyday politics. This is precisely the opposite of what Chávez did — and what was at the heart of his radical project of change.
When the CNE questioned whether the opposition had collected enough signatures for a recall referendum in 2004, Chávez said the referendum should go ahead anyway so that the people could decide.
This example is well worth keeping in mind today.
Together with opposing foreign interference in Venezuela’s sovereign affairs, a democratic and emancipatory left should support calls for transparency and for the CNE to present its tally sheets to the Venezuelan people.