Maduro Could Remain Venezuela’s President No Matter What Voters Decided

[Pelican Press 0]

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Maduro Could Remain Venezuela’s President No Matter What Voters Decided

The message delivered Thursday night was blunt: The ******* States recognized Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate as the winner in Sunday’s election and dismissed a declaration by election officials that the country’s autocrat, President Nicolás Maduro, had won.

The government has not produced any data supporting his claim of victory, the Biden administration said, while his rival, Edmundo González, had tallies from a majority of voting machines that his team said show he had won by an “insurmountable margin.” The New York Times has not verified those tallies.

The U.S. declaration ratcheted up the international condemnation of a vote riddled with irregularities and was an attempt to warn Mr. Maduro that the world would not accept a farce. Even some of Mr. Maduro’s fellow leftist leaders in ****** America have expressed grave doubts about his claim of victory.

But will it matter?

There is widespread skepticism that foreign pressure will affect Mr. Maduro’s grip on power, at least in the short term.

Already, protests in support of Mr. González have sputtered out, as security forces and pro-government gangs have responded with force. At least 17 people have *****, including one soldier. About 750 people have been arrested in the demonstrations, according to the country’s attorney general.

At the same time, a half dozen members of the opposition’s campaign team are hiding out in an embassy in Caracas, the capital, trying to avoid arrest. Mr. González’s main backer, the popular opposition leader María Corina Machado, said in a recent op-ed that she was writing “

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” Her public appearances since the election have been brief.

The authorities have threatened to arrest her and Mr. González, while their team awoke on Friday to discover that her office had been broken into and vandalized. The two opposition leaders have called for a march in Caracas on Saturday. But many Venezuelans know they could face arrest, or even ******, and it’s unclear how large the gathering will be.

In response to foreign governments criticizing Mr. Maduro’s victory claim, the Venezuelan leader has simply ordered some of their diplomatic missions to leave his country.

His movement — first under Hugo Chávez and, for the last 11 years, under Mr. Maduro — has ruled Venezuela for a quarter century, consolidating power and gaining control over every branch of the government and most of the news media.

The ******* States has tried for years to oust Mr. Maduro, calling his re-election in 2018 a sham, imposing harsh sanctions on the country’s oil industry and, along with dozens of other countries, backing the head of the country’s legislature, Juan Guaidó, in 2019, when Mr. Guaidó declared himself the nation’s interim leader. None of that succeeded in removing Mr. Maduro.

Now life in the repressive country could get even worse.

Francisco Rodríguez, a Venezuelan economist, said that following Sunday’s election, Venezuela was probably looking at “the beginning of a truly full-fledged dictatorship” in which even the remaining shreds of democracy would disappear.

In Venezuela many people believe Mr. Maduro allowed the vote to take place, after leading opponents were disqualified, jailed or driven into exile, in an effort to gain some domestic and foreign legitimacy, and as part of an effort to have the ******* States lift its sanctions.

People close to him said he believed that he could win.

But as exit polls on Sunday began to show that Mr. Maduro was losing — badly — the goal shifted. By late afternoon, his quest was simply to remain in power, no matter the price, analysts said. And that appears to be exactly what Mr. Maduro did.

Hours after polls closed, the country’s election authority announced that with 80 percent of voting machines reporting, Mr. Maduro had received 51 percent of the vote, and Mr. González 44 percent. But it released no vote counts.

The opposition campaign, however, collected receipts printed by each polling machine. By Thursday the campaign said that it had gathered receipts from 81 percent of the machines, and that its count indicated that Mr. González had won 67 percent of the vote.

It has published

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But the reality, Mr. Rodríguez said, is that the cost of losing was just too high for Mr. Maduro to even consider: Leaving power could land him in prison.

The leader has been indicted in the ******* States, accused of narco-trafficking, and is being investigated by the International ********* Court for ******* against humanity.

But committing electoral ****** in such a seemingly brazen manner doesn’t cost him nearly as much.

The ******* States had already imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, helping to strangle the economy. Mr. Maduro was already isolated from much of the world. He was already losing support inside the country, even among lower-income people who had once rallied behind Mr. Chávez.

And Mr. Maduro already knew he would retain the financial support of Russia, China and Iran, all of which quickly congratulated him after he claimed re-election.

The Biden administration is likely to be cautious about new economic sanctions, in part because they could do further damage to Venezuela’s economy, triggering more migration to the ******* States, which is already a political headache for the Democrats ahead of the U.S. election in November.

The ******* States has also lost a good deal of international credibility in its ability to corral nations behind efforts to push Mr. Maduro out, following its ******* backing of Mr. Guaidó. Some international political players considered Mr. Guaidó’s claim to the presidency to be undemocratic.

Countries that could have some sway over Mr. Maduro are Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, all regional powers led by leftist leaders who have been relatively friendly with the Venezuelan leader.

All three have taken a softer approach than the ******* States, voicing doubts about the election rather than saying outright that Mr. Maduro lost, believing, perhaps, that if they avoid antagonizing him they can persuade him to finally release vote results.

Or, in the longer term, he could be pushed toward some kind of power-sharing deal with the opposition, as has happened in other authoritarian nations.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, during a new conferences this week, warned the Biden administration and other governments not to make decisions about the election until a final count of the votes is made available.

“Keep your hands and noses out of the way,” he said.

On Thursday, the three ****** ********* governments

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calling for electoral authorities to release election results broken down by polling station, and offered their “willingness to support the efforts of dialogue” between the ruling party and the opposition.

But they stopped short of criticizing Mr. Maduro.

Ricardo Zuniga, the White House National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere during the Obama administration, said that Brazil and Colombia were Venezuela’s “last connections to the democratic world.”

They are also Venezuela’s neighbors.

“So they have dense leverage,” he said. “If they choose to use it.”

If Mr. Maduro fails to present evidence that he won, the most effective move would be to forcefully denounce him and refuse to recognize his victory, Mr. Zuniga said. That would weaken Mr. Maduro inside Venezuela, potentially causing him to be more willing to negotiate, he added.

But Brazil and Colombia may avoid that route, as well as joining any additional sanctions Washington might impose, because they ***** it would close diplomatic channels with Venezuela.

The administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil has become a key ally in the international community’s approach to Venezuela, according to a U.S. State Department official who was not authorized to speak on the record about diplomatic affairs.

The Brazilian leader has developed a warm relationship with Mr. Biden since the U.S. president helped Mr. Lula fend off Brazil’s own threat to democracy during the 2022 Brazilian election, and Mr. Lula has grown frustrated with Mr. Maduro in recent months, the official said.

His government this week came to the aid of six members of the González-Machado campaign who have been holed up the Argentine embassy in Caracas in an effort to avoid arrest. When Mr. Maduro ordered the Argentines to leave this week, Brazil took over the embassy building, effectively offering its protection to Mr. Maduro’s enemies. It was a bold stance for Brazil.

Yet there are signs that Mr. Lula may ultimately shy away from taking dramatic steps against Mr. Maduro, like breaking off relations.

In an interview

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on Tuesday, he characterized the election dispute as a quotidian disagreement that could be resolved in the Venezuelan courts — though the country’s top court is run Maduro allies. “It is normal for there to be a ******,” the Brazilian president said.

One senior Brazilian diplomat, who was also not authorized to speak on the record about sensitive matters, said his government would be reluctant to do much beyond what it has done in asking for the full vote tally. More chaos inside Venezuela could spill over into neighboring Brazil, the diplomat said. Already, more than a half million Venezuelan migrants live in Brazil.

The diplomat said Mr. Lula was being pragmatic — given that his country had a stake in keeping Venezuela as stable as possible.

Simon Romero contributed reporting from Mexico City.

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