Five Myths About Venezuela’s Elections

Tim Anderson, Orinoco Tribune, August 10, 2024 —

Here is the lesson for future Venezuelan politicians: Will they join national institutionality or simply become the latest creatures of comprador coup culture?

In the global culture wars, there persists a notion that independent countries must somehow gain approval from large, predatory military or financial powers. This of course misses the point that the right to self-determination of peoples and the independence of nations presupposes separation from and resistance to those same imperial powers.

Ever since the phenomenon of Hugo Chavez in the late 1990s dispensed with the moribund two-party system in Venezuela, the great hegemonic power to the north has struggled to recognise even one of Chavismo’s many electoral victories. Venezuela had long been a source of oil for the US war machine and those old certainties were gone.

It is in this important context that we should consider the polemics over the 2024 Venezuelan presidential elections, and the rejectionist logic of the US government and its proxies. Several western myths have been articulated by Washington and then copied by states wishing to ingratiate themselves with the US regime.

In this article, I consider the myths of Washington as an honest broker, the notion of a Venezuelan ‘dictatorship’ which controls everything, including the electoral system, the use of partisan polls, the disqualification of political opponents, and the claim that Chavismo ruined the country’s economy.

1. Washington as an honest broker?
The first myth is the idea that Washington is somehow an authoritative arbiter of “democracy and human rights” in other nations. The experience of Latin America has dozens of examples of anti-democratic interference to suit the interests of the great northern neighbour. In 1889, Cuban nationalist Jose Martí observed the cynical false pretexts mobilized to intervene, steal victory from Cuban freedom fighters, create a Spanish-American war, and seize Spanish territories in the Caribbean, “They want to provoke a war to have a pretext to intervene and, with the authority of being mediator and guarantor, to seize the country … There is no more cowardly thing in the annals of free people; nor such cold blooded evil”. Since then, there have been dozens of US interventions, mainly to seize resources or change nationalist governments not fully in accord with US regional interests.

Washington has intervened in Venezuela many times since the 1998 Bolivarian Revolution, which aimed to restore sovereign control over oil resources. Washington backed the 2002 coup attempt. which kidnapped elected President Hugo Chavez, and then ran another failed coup attempt in 2020. As part of their hybrid wars, successive US regimes imposed unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) in attempts to damage the economy, collapse Venezuelan society, and seize the country and its resources. Notable aggressions were Obama’s declaration of Venezuela as a “security threat” to the US and Trump’s imposition of multiple “sanctions”, which he said were expected to collapse the nation, paving the way for the US to seize its oil. The Biden regime carried on the Obama-Trump legacy.

This brief history is enough to demonstrate why Washington can never be considered an independent arbiter or mediator; its every move against Venezuela is tainted with bad faith and criminal self-interest. Washington has been unable to reconcile itself with strongly nationalist regimes which reject its hegemonic claims; the chagrin is so much greater over nationalist regimes which had been a key energy source. In this respect we should compare the CIA’s 1954 coup in Iran (after oil nationalization) with the CIA-backed attempted coup in Venezuela in 2002 (during partial oil renationalization).

Washington cannot be an honest broker as regards Venezuela.

2. Doesn’t a Maduro ‘dictatorship’ control the electoral system?
A common mythical theme in Western reports is that Venezuela under Presidents Chavez and Maduro has been a “dictatorship” which also controls the electoral system. In fact, the 1999 constitution and the subsequent electoral law (updated in 2009) established Electoral Power as a separate arm within the state, distinct from the Executive. Members of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) are appointed by the National Assembly or the Supreme Court (TSJ).

On top of that, the mechanized voting system is a unique Venezuelan invention which builds in security and audits. This system was praised by former US President Jimmy Carter back in 2013, “Venezuela probably has the most excellent voting system that I have ever known.”

During the 2024 elections, the Carter Centre, minus its founder, reverted to the standard Washington line, as run by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken,  the CNE results could not be credible because they had not published (within the first few days) the full disaggregated voting results. This became the mantra of ‘fraud’ claims.

While recognising the strong (60%) participation, Blinken said, “The CNE’s rapid declaration … came with no supporting evidence. The CNE has still not published disaggregated data or any of the vote tally sheets”. The Carter Centre similarly argued, “the authority’s failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles”.

In fact, the process was quite normal, and well ahead of US election standards. The CNE issued its initial result for Maduro (51.2% after 80% of votes counted) and a second report on August 2, after 96.87% had been counted. That second report gave Maduro 51.95% (6.4 million votes) and 43.18 % (5.3 million) for González. The results came despite “massive informatic attacks” on the CNE infrastructure and “terrorist” attacks on and the burning of CNE offices and centres of voting.

Contrary to Blinken and the Carter Centre, under the Organic Law of Electoral Processes (2009) the CNE has to publish full results “within 30 days”. So for the Carter Centre to demand these results on 30 July, i.e. within 48 hours, and to claim non-publication had “violated numerous provisions” of the law, was disingenuous. A week after the election the data and the disputes were referred to Venezuela’s Supreme Court (TSJ).

By contrast, the USA has no national electoral body and its final results usually take more than two months to finalise. Yet, like Venezuela, the winner is announced by election officials and media outlets when one candidate is believed to have an “unbeatable lead”. Unlike in Venezuela, in the USA there is no direct election of the President, as the final vote falls to the states under an Electoral College system. There are five examples of US Presidents (Adams, Hayes, Harrison, G. W. Bush, and Trump) who did not win the popular vote but won the election.

3. Didn’t independent polls predict the defeat of Maduro?
The media warfare before and during the elections was intense. US media was in open campaigning mode, with the New York Times running headlines like: “This Is Venezuela’s Moment. It Needs the World’s Help”. CNN, for its part, falsely claimed that Maduro threatened a “bloodbath” if he did not win; in fact he was referring to planned opposition tactics and their long history of violence and non-compliance. In fact, Maduro predicted the opposition organised violence the day after the poll. There had been 25 years of such “golpista” (coup-oriented) violence.

Maduro denounced media misinformation, saying he was trying to prevent a war and that the US-backed opposition wanted to convert the country into a neoliberal disaster like Argentina under Milei. Nevertheless, CNN argued that the election was “a chance to rebuild Venezuela’s economic power”, while The Financial Times claimed polls show a “crushing defeat” was coming for Maduro, if there were a “clean vote”.

The polls were weaponised. In the lead-up to the elections, several US-commissioned polls (Datanálisis, Delphos, Consultores 21 y ORC Consultores) conditioned a narrative that the opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez – a former CIA operative who helped form the notorious death squads in Central America in the 1980s but who was barely known in Venezuela until quite recently – was 20 or 30 points ahead in public opinionو and therefore Nicolas Maduro could only win by fraud.

The LA Times claimed polls were predicting a landslide for Gonzalez. It said that, for Maduro to win, “given his opponent’s 25- to 30-point lead in the polls, would require massive fraud”. Poll tracker, also citing Dataincorp, Meganálisis and ORC Consultores gave Gonzalez a huge lead of 50-70% over Maduro’s 12-18%.

Western reports studiously avoided polls by Hinterlaces, Paramétrica and Ámbito, which predicted pretty much what the CNE would announce in the early hours of July 29. Ámbito in July had Maduro winning with between 51.74% and 71.6% of the vote, with Gonzalez securing between 20.5 and 24%. Paramétrica had Maduro on 51.74% and Gonzalez on 29.06%. On participation, 68% said they would turn out to vote, with their minds focused on the economy. Hinterlaces in June had President Maduro leading with 55.6% support, with the far right’s Edmundo González on 22.1%.

There was even a “war of exit polls”, with Hinterlaces giving Maduro 54.6% and Gonzalez 42.5% at 12 midday, while the US-oriented Meganálisis gave Gonzalez 65.8% at 3 pm. The United States and opposition also cited a 3 pm exit poll which supported their claimed victory, conducted by Edison Research, a company linked to the CIA. None of this was conclusive.

The US government has notoriously funded media and poll bodies to suit its ends. For example, the International Republican Institute (IRI) used ‘snowball polls’ in 2012 to suggest internal Syrian support for armed intervention during the attempted ‘color revolution’ in Syria. Such deeply biased ‘polls’, which start with friends and move to friends of friends, have no representative validity at all. It is likely that similar techniques were used in Venezuela to inflate expectations of victory and then claims of fraud when the US-backed candidate did not win.

One crack in this media war was shown in an interview on MSN, where conservative lawyer and international consultant Eglée González-Lobato acknowledged that Maduro could win “without electoral fraud”. “Venezuela’s electoral system is quite robust, leaving enough traces for automation experts to detect any errors”, she said.

All candidates except Gonzalez signed a statement saying they would accept the CNE’s result. The ‘Unified Platform’, it seems, was determined to not recognise any results announced by the CNE.  They expected defeat and were crying “fraud” well before the election.

This writer was one of more than one thousand international guests, called to observe the elections. Most reported favourably on the general climate in the lead-up to and during the elections, and on the integrity of the voting process itself. The Venezuelan government did not allow in as observers those who had attacked the country, such as an EU delegation which had backed illegal US economic siege measures against the country. Nevertheless, Washington and the BBC reported that anonymous “international observers” had condemned the election. This was highly misleading. Consider these favourable and ‘free and fair’ reports from Chilean observers and South African observers.

4. Doesn’t Maduro bar his opponents from running for election?
US sources often cite the disqualification of some Venezuelan candidates as an example of the “dictatorship”. In fact, disqualifications are done by law and not by executive order. In the past, some far-right opposition figures have been disqualified for serious crimes. Leopoldo López, for example, was convicted and in 2014 sentenced to a long prison term for public incitement, criminal conspiracy, and instigating arson and criminal damage. The US media presented him as a freedom fighter. López was released from jail early in 2017.

In the case of Maria Corina Macahado, the opposition leader who could not run in 2024, the reported reasons for her disqualification included decisions of the Supreme Court that:

• She supported US unilateral sanctions, had been involved in corruption, and helped cause losses of Venezuela’s foreign assets, including the United States-based oil refiner Citgo and chemicals company Monomeros (in Colombia);
• She was involved in “the corruption plot orchestrated by the usurper Juan Guaido”, which led to a “criminal blockade of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as well as the shameless dispossession of the companies and wealth of the Venezuelan people abroad, with the complicity of corrupt governments”;
• She had been an appointed Panamanian diplomat, which is prohibited under articles 149 and 191 of the constitution,

In many other countries, she would be serving a very long prison sentence, not just facing disqualification from public office. For example, US Code § 2381 says that “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

5. Didn’t Chavismo ruin the country’s economy?
It is true that, after the death of Chavez in 2003, many of the tremendous social gains such as the reduction of poverty and extreme poverty were compromised, but that was mainly due to the economic warfare carried out against Venezuela by the Obama and Trump regimes.

In 2015, Obama declared Venezuela a threat to US security, imposing a series of coercive measures on the country. To this, Trump added another 200 measures, intended to bring Venezuela to its knees. The artificial proclamation of unelected Juan Guaido as “President” added a device by which the Trump administration could steal billions of dollars in Venezuelan foreign assets, including gold reserves held by the Bank of England and the entire Citgo petroleum business in the USA.

In 2021, UN rapporteur Alena Douhan reported on the drastic social impact of Washington’s unilateral coercive measures (illegal under international law). Those wide-reaching “sanctions” against Venezuela had a “devastating” effect on the entire population’s living conditions.

Damage to the economy was worst in 2019-2020, when Venezuelan oil export earnings (and therefore state capacity for social spending) fell to 1% of those in 2012. Salaries fell to very low levels with inflation and devaluation of the currency. However, by 2021, oil exports resumed and inflation fell to very low levels, according to CEPAL. In 2022, Iran also helped restart some damaged refineries. Oil exports continued to grow through 2023 and 2024. With this growth and better management, the currency stabilized and social investment remained very high, as much as 77% of the budget in 2024.

By late 2023, President Maduro said there had been some important achievements, and renewed prosperity was on course for 2024. This prosperity would be underwritten by economic growth, social cohesion and popular participation. Community level education and health programs could advance. Better relations with neighbouring Colombia helped stabilize security, alongside support from other Latin American nations.

By 2024, Maduro drove the public housing program into the construction of more than 5 million new homes, social security was personalised into a Homeland card (Carnet de la Patria), which is exercised through a phone app and guarantees food, fuel and other subsidised goods and services. The opposition and US media called this card an “utterly evil” instrument of repression, supposedly because of its surveillance potential; but that claim confirmed their intention to dismantle this foundation of social security.

Online sources and electoral pamphlets reminded citizens that, by investment of increased oil exports, the government had stabilized the currency, increased food production, supported the social missions e.g. providing 100 million free health consultations, removing illiteracy and stimulating community projects and diverse small business.

By January 2024 a Hinterlaces poll showed that 82% of Venezuelans saw things as getting better in 2024. That certainly improved Maduro’s prospects of re-election. On the other side, the opposition mostly relied on slogans of ‘freedom’ and anti-Chavismo, masking the typical liberal plans to sell off the country’s assets and dismantle social security. The US backed opposition dared not present publicly a plan that promised alarming “structural adjustments.”

National Institutionality or Coup Culture?
On 2 August (5 days after the election) President Maduro referred the opposition claims against the CNE – plus complaints over hacking attacks on the CNE – to the Supreme Court (TSJ) under a “writ of amparo”. The TSJ in turn called on all candidates to present their complaints and data. 9 out of 10 did so, except Edmundo Gonzalez.

Notwithstanding Washington’s latest fraudulent attempt to declare Gonzalez as “elected president”, Maduro’s re-election internally seems quite secure, with the CNE, the National Assembly, and the military, announcing their full support, alongside mass rallies in support of their institutions and their democracy. Contrary to western media, pro-government rallies have been consistently bigger than those of the US backed opposition.

US external pressures will continue and aggravate the ongoing split in opposition strategies, of either (1) participating in national institutions or (2) abandoning that for refuge in North American backed coups.

Former opposition leaders Manuel Rosales and Henrique Capriles, both linked to the 2002 coup attempt and prosecuted for economic crimes, at different times, nevertheless resumed their engagement in the political process. Both failed in presidential campaigns but both also enjoyed successive terms as governors of the states of Zulia and Miranda, respectively.

On the other side, we see failed fake, unelected “president” Juan Guaido sitting in Miami, the refuge of many extremist Latin leaders. It seems that Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez, if they are not arrested and jailed, will join Juan Guaido as cast off agents of coups, on behalf of their masters in Washington. Therein lies a lesson for future Venezuelan politicians: Will they join national institutionality or simply become the latest creatures of comprador coup culture?