Why the Elections in Venezuela Matter

Venezuela’s presidential election on July 28 is the most consequential since the Bolivarian revolution came to power more than a quarter of a century ago promising a new era of bounty. Its leader, the firebrand ex-military officer, Hugo Chávez, did a convincing job denouncing the elites that had democratically ruled Venezuela for decades and had, despite missteps and failings, brought prosperity and stability to the country.

Notwithstanding the grandiose promises and bombastic rhetoric, reality turned out differently. Chávez was both the embodiment and a caricature of the classical Latin American strongman. What came to be called Chavismo was defined by its epithets: Revolutionary, socialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist. Presidential term limits were ended. Institutions, including the judiciary, the armed forces, and the electoral council, came under his control. The independent media was intimidated, silenced, or bought; NGOs harassed. Chávez squandered a massive oil bonanza from historically high oil prices on mismanagement, corruption, cronyism, and unfinished megaprojects. While the wealthy Gulf petro-monarchies and Norway established huge sovereign wealth funds to diversify their economies from fossil fuels, Chávez left Venezuela indebted and crumbling when he died in 2013.

Venezuela’s collapse

His chosen heir, Nicolás Maduro, less charismatic than his mentor -and less fortunate- inherited a broken country with collapsing oil prices. The eagerness to maintain appearances and not betray the failings of Chavismo led to a doubling down on failed state-led policies. Venezuela experienced the most severe humanitarian crisis in its two-hundred-year-old history. GDP contracted by roughly 75% between 2014 and 2021, the worst economic collapse in a country not at war in half a century. It endured for years, and until 2023, the highest inflation rate in the world, surpassing 13,000% in 2018. At the height of the crisis, roughly 82% of households lived in poverty and 53% were facing extreme poverty. Venezuelans lost an average of eight kilos in body weight in 2016 and a further eleven kilos in 2017.

Food scarcity was accompanied by a lack of medicines which, when available, were prohibitively expensive for a large majority of the population. In a country that once prided itself in having one of the best health sectors in Latin America, people are dying for lack of medicines and medical treatment. Diseases that had been eradicated during the much-maligned democratic era (1958-1999) such as measles and diphtheria, returned. Malaria became common and spread across the country. From every possible indicator –economic, poverty, health, nutrition, education, security– Venezuela collapsed.

Contributing to the quagmire, oil production experienced a gradual decline from 2005, collapsing from 2.4 million BPD in 2015 to barely 558 thousand BPD in 2021, its lowest level in many decades. The Maduro regime blamed US sanctions and the decrease in oil prices for the debacle. Though the accusation is partially true, responsibility lies primarily on government ineptitude, corruption, and mismanagement. In any case, the economic collapse and decline of the oil industry predates US sanctions.

The economic misery and repressive nature of the regime have led to a massive exodus of Venezuelans, the largest in the Western Hemisphere and one of the worst in the world. Once a generous recipient of immigrants, roughly eight million Venezuelans – a quarter of the population- have fled, the majority since 2013. There is no worse image of the failures of the Chavismo than that of young Venezuelan professional woman prostituting themselves across the border in Colombia and Brazil to feed their families back home.

The real economic war

The survival of many of those who stayed back is linked to the regime’s diminished coffers. The provision of government bonuses to roughly 80% of households, food assistance, and public employment have served as guileful instruments to buy fleeting, grudging, loyalties. The paltry amounts cannot hide the scale of the misery. In a country where the basic family food basket is $400 hundred a month, the minimum monthly income, and pensions, are roughly $5.40, by far the lowest in Latin America. The suffocating nature of the regime limits the possibility of meaningful work and of leading fulfilling, independent lives. While Chavista officials accuse Washington of pursuing an economic war against Venezuela, the real economic war is the one the regime is waging on its people.

After decades in power, the regime’s continued accusations of a fascist political opposition, and a conniving economic oligarchy, ring hollow. The corrupt elites of today are not the ghosts of yore but rather a kleptocratic and entrenched ruling class including military officers, boliburgueses (Bolivarian bourgeoisie), party militants, and high-ranking officials. They have brazenly enriched themselves amidst a morass of corruption, drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime; according to Transparency International, Venezuela ranks 177 among the 180 most corrupt countries and territories surveyed.

At the risk of overwhelming the reader with data, they nonetheless serve to quantify the failures of Chavismo and the desperation of so many Venezuelans for a better future.

Hope

Until last year, most Venezuelans had given up hope. However, in an agreement reached in Barbados in late 2023, the Maduro regime promised to hold free and fair elections in 2024 in exchange for the easing of US sanctions on the oil and mining sectors. In the same month, Maria Corina Machado, a civic activist, politician, and former lawmaker, overwhelmingly won the opposition’s primaries with 93% of the votes cast, transforming her into their presidential candidate. The opposition forces, once divided and dispirited, have rallied around her. Machado leads, for the first time, a strengthened opposition with broad grassroots support. True to its nature, the Maduro regime promptly disqualified Machado from running for office on trumped-up charges and did so again to a chosen successor. A last-minute maneuver permitted Edmundo González, a retired career Ambassador who has collaborated for years with the opposition, to run in her stead. Polls point to a crushing victory for the opposition forces if the elections are free and fair. Machado enjoys 80% support among the population; Gonzalez’s candidacy has been surging gradually and surpasses 60%, whereas Maduro’s languishes in the mid-teens.

Sensing defeat, the regime has intensified its intimidation and repression of dissent. The opposition has been denied access to the vast network of state or state-pliant mass media. Scores of civil society and opposition activists, including members of Machado’s and Gonzalez’s close entourage, have been detained in the past few months. As the opposition forces gain popular support, the regime has recurred to petty tactics such as blocking roads to restrict their campaigning in the country’s interior, closing restaurants where they eat, and impeding them from staying in hotels and taking domestic flights.

With only several days remaining, it is almost too late for Maduro to cancel elections by orchestrating a regional crisis (with Guyana, for example), or denouncing yet another assassination attempt (both Chavez and Maduro have made dozens of them). The regime has, though, schemed to restrict oversight of the electoral process by prohibiting some international observers such as the EU, and changing electoral guidelines to lessen scrutiny. Machado has denounced the election authorities for blocking the accreditation of opposition citizen witnesses to polling stations. Moreover, the regime has severely restricted the right to vote for Venezuelans abroad; only 69,000 of the roughly four million eligible voters overseas (almost a quarter of the electorate) have been allowed to register. The government could still attempt to manipulate the election by suppressing voter turnout and sowing confusion at the polls, by vote-count manipulation, and by falsifying final tallies.

Electoral scenarios

Maduro has spent huge sums propping up the government’s patronage programs, raising minimum wages and the currency in a last-minute effort to boost his image. If he wins, Venezuela will continue its downward spiral. In such a scenario, the opposition forces could fall into disarray and fragment once again. Millions more Venezuelans have already indicated they intend to emigrate.

If, as expected, the opposition forces win the elections, the return to democracy will be an arduous challenge. A massive victory for the González-Machado tandem would give legitimacy to an embryonic administration and reduce the chances of hard-core Chavistas contesting the results. An opposition unity government needs to remain united and coherent, which means curtailing the interest of its many factions and assuaging the wounded egos of its leaders. Moreover, the Venezuelan people, long hopeless and impoverished, will want quick solutions to a buildup of structural failings.

An opposition victory will entail much behind-the-scenes wrangling during the long six-month transition process, ideally with international mediation. The regime shows no sign of intending to relinquish power; Maduro himself has threatened a bloodbath if he loses. There is apprehension that vindictive elements of his entourage will attempt to destabilize a democratic transition. Yet there are also scenarios for a peaceful outcome. If victorious, both Machado and González have expressed support for negotiations on some legal protections, including possible amnesty for indictments ranging from corruption to human rights abuses to drug trafficking, for Maduro and members of his government. Moreover, Washington could withdraw an array of criminal charges against Maduro and others if he promises to step down peacefully should he lose. Successful negotiations could also compel the International Criminal Court to provide further incentives by withdrawing charges of crimes against humanity against Maduro and members of his regime. Despite much frustration over the eventual impunity granted to Chavistas despite their role in the collapse of Venezuela, conciliatory gestures could greatly contribute to reducing tensions and guaranteeing a peaceful transition.

A colony, a satellite, and an ally

The elections matter in ways that transcend the plight of Venezuela. The repercussions transcend Venezuela’s borders. Chavistas often refer to the US simply as el imperio (the empire), with a heavy and derisive emphasis on the p (it sounds better in Spanish). The rhetoric is oft accompanied by the threat to Venezuela’s sovereignty of a US armed intervention to seize the country’s abundant natural resources, including the world’s largest oil reserves. But the last time Washington vowed to send its navy to Venezuela was in 2016, when it offered to send a medical ship (with Venezuelan volunteer doctors on board) to help in the country’s devastating health crisis. Maduro brusquely rebuffed the offer. Rogue regimes find it expedient to blame imaginary foes to justify their failings, and Washington has always been a convenient scapegoat.

The Maduro regime’s forebodings of US imperial intentions conveniently overlook that it has already ceded tranches of its sovereignty to Beijing, Moscow, and particularly Havana. The first two have become Venezuela’s main bilateral foreign creditors, assuming direct control of joint energy projects due to the government’s ineptitude –Russia even had a lien on Venezuela’s refineries in the US. Both have signed substantial military contracts with Caracas ranging from sophisticated Russian weaponry to Chinese riot-control gear and vehicles used to suppress democratic protests.

Caracas has become a willful pawn in the growing rivalry between Washington and Beijing and Moscow. Yet the kingmaker is Cuba, whose Communist regime has penetrated all levels of power with the connivance of the Venezuelan authorities to guarantee their survival through the surreptitious dispatch of political commissars to oversee ministries and notaries, of military advisers and intelligence agents to spy on dissenters and to watch over the armed forces, and even bodyguards to protect the president. The Chavista experiment has endured due to Havana’s pervasive security presence and training of local counterparts.

The misfortune of Venezuela is that Maduro’s closest allies, Cuba, China and Russia, but also Iran, Syria and Turkey, have all been cognizant, even complicit, in the country’s debacle, while oblivious to its self-inflicted humanitarian crisis and descent into a mafia state. They have preferred, instead, to opportunistically pursue transactional relations and forge anti-US bonds. Venezuela today is beholden to the world’s worst authoritarian regimes and criminal groups. Cuba has virtually colonized Venezuela with its extensive and secretive occupation; Colombian guerrilla and criminal groups openly control Venezuelan territory and participate in drug trafficking and illegal mining; Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hezbollah cells are operating in Venezuela, helping the regime create a popular mobilization force. Meanwhile, Russia has deployed military advisors and Kremlin-linked private military contractors to protect Maduro; while China is spearheading the regime’s cyberwarfare and surveillance systems.

Only Washington, along with Canada and liberal democracies in Europe, and for a while a group of Latin American countries known as the Lima Group, consistently denounced the human rights abuses, the corruption and the humanitarian crisis, the erosion of the rule of law in Venezuela. Yet around the world, many still denounce US imperialism while conveniently overlooking the pernicious presence of these repressive regimes in Venezuela.

It is misleading to align Chavismo with the pink wave of leftist governments in Latin America, best embodied by Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. The latter have respected the independent institutions and system of checks and balances that guarantee the alternation of political power. Venezuela, rather, lies in the periphery of Latin American politics, along with Cuba and Nicaragua, the other two dictatorships in the region. But more so, the Chavista regime should be perceived as squarely aligned with an axis of authoritarian states intent on challenging the liberal international order that, despite its flaws, has brought historic global peace and prosperity.

Turning the tide

The international media will cover the July 28 elections for several days and will then focus on other significant events. Yet Venezuela’s election could be a harbinger of a changing political tide across the world. Despite increasing repression, the Chavista regime has not been able to stifle dissenting forces. There is still political opposition; there are still courageous political leaders willing to confront tyranny; there is still a robust and independent civil society that resists. More importantly, there are millions of Venezuelans willing to brave threats of lost handouts and jobs to vote for a better future. The significance of a peaceful transition cannot be overstated. Neither can a successful and inclusive democratic government.

The last 18 years have seen global freedoms decline in every region of the world. But more recently, populations are pushing back at the polls. Indian voters stunted Narendra Modi’s polarizing message and authoritarian streak by denying his party a parliamentary majority. In South Africa, a corrupt African National Congress lost its majority for the time since the end of Apartheid. And in Poland, an illiberal government lost power after eight years of divisive rule. The Polish experience exemplifies the challenges Venezuela will confront on a much greater scale. The new Polish government has struggled to restore the rule of law amidst packed courts and appointed cronies to the bureaucracy, state-owned firms, and public media.

Venezuela will, hopefully, show that it is possible to revert the democratic backsliding that has recently ailed the free world. For that, it will need the diplomatic and economic support of the international community, particularly of the panoply of democracies from the US and Canada, from the EU, from the major Latin American capitols, and even East Asia. The first step is to win the election.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.