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Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro speaks at the Supreme Court of Justice, in Caracas, Venezuela July 31, 2024.
Maduro offers “audit” of stolen election and threatens opposition with arrests
Protesters are marching in thestreets of Venezuela to demand that President Nicolas Maduro admit defeat in last Sunday’s election. Maduro claimed to have won by 51%, but the opposition says exit polls point to a strong win by their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez. The US-based Carter Center, one of the few election-integrity watchdogs allowed to monitor the vote, agrees, noting that it “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity.”
On Wednesday, Maduro ordered the Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the election, which is a slight concession to cries for transparency, but he’s using an institution that is closely allied with his regime.
TheCarter Center added that the National Electoral Council, which formally proclaimed Maduro president for a third term through 2031 on Monday, demonstrated clear bias in his favor. It also pointed out that short voter registration deadlines and the exclusion of most of the country’s large diaspora (more than seven million Venezuelan citizens have fled during Maduro’s presidency) impacted the result.
The CNE has resisted showing precinct-level results, despite international calls for transparency. The regime is unlikely to produce adequate evidence to dispel doubts about the election, which will trigger more unrest – and will likely prompt the US to impose sanctions.
Still, Venezuela’smilitary has continued to back Maduro. Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino has referred to the protests as a “coup in progress,” and Maduro’s regime has suggested that opposition leaders should be arrested. But Eurasia Group’s Latin America Director Risa Grais-Targow says that is unlikely because it would only prompt more social unrest and an even tougher international response.
Maduro's dubious Venezuela win leaves Biden with few options
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week. Plenty of things we could be talking about, but I want to bring up Venezuela, where we just had elections in the last 24 hours, and they were very clearly stolen by Nicolás Maduro, puts the Biden administration in a difficult spot with a clearly failed policy.
It makes US look weak and certainly makes Maduro look strong, but not the outcome anyone wanted, even though it was pretty clearly expected. So there were exit polls, credible exit polls that showed that the unified opposition candidate, Edmundo González, won with at least 60% of the vote across the country, turnout very high, despite it being very difficult to get to a lot of voting spots and clearly with those including from the military and other regime forces that were trying to intimidate people on site, you still had well over 60% of registered voters actually turning out. But it was pretty clear, Maduro saying all the way through it was going to be lots of bloodshed if he didn't win, he was able to fix the outcome that he wanted and announced a win of 51% of the vote. There are very limited details that can back up the claims that they put forward. The Venezuelan government blocked key international observers, including lots of leaders from across Latin America that were unable to either land or deplane in Caracas.
The government impeded the transmission of voting results from a number of polling stations. Over the coming weeks, we’ll clearly see all sorts of additional evidence of irregularities from the opposition testimony of polling station witnesses, paper counts from polling stations that make it clear that this was stolen. And yet, very little is going to happen for a few reasons.
First of all, because the military continues to completely support Nicolás Maduro. And that means the willingness and ability to use force to suppress and repress opposition is very high. Secondly, there have been lots of efforts to engage in anti-government protests over the last decade. And the response has been violence and incarceration. And there isn't a lot of willingness of Venezuelans to continue with that average Venezuelans.
What we've seen instead are millions of Venezuelans that have left the country, fled the country. And that's what we're going to see again. We're going to see a huge amount of emigration. Colombia, of course, is the country that gets stuck with most of it. But there are many of them trying to get to Mexico, trying to get to the United States.
More pressure on a migration policy from the United States, from Biden, from Kamala Harris, that is seen as a failure and is clearly the biggest policy vulnerability that Harris has in her election bid. Also, having said all of this, the United States has been trying to do a carrot and stick approach, saying we're going to remove and reduce sanctions, allow oil licenses if you're willing to go ahead with a free and fair election. And Maduro wants the money, wants to be able to produce more oil and said, “sure, I'll go along,” when he was completely not credible, it was obvious to everyone he was not credible. And now the Biden administration is stuck with a failed policy and yet really doesn't want to put those oil licenses into sanctions, doesn't want to take them away because he doesn't want oil prices to go higher, especially not in an election environment with high inflation.
So what is he going to do? He's going to complain. He's going to say this was a sham, that the Americans support the Venezuelan people, and he'll find some additional sanctions that don't matter as much to put on board while Venezuela and Maduro, the dictator, looks like a winner. This is, unfortunately a bad day for representative democracy, a bad day for US policy, a good day for a dictator in Venezuela.
A graph comparing Venezuela's GDP per capita with the average price of crude oil.
The Graphic Truth: Economic turmoil in Venezuela
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves but a combination of corruption, mismanagement, and tough US sanctions since the Maduro regime came to power in 2013 has meant that the petrostate has failed to benefit from its vast reserves of liquid gold.
While high oil prices under the Chavez regime in the early 2000s gave a boost to Venezuela’s middle class, US sanctions first imposed in 2006 – and significantly ramped up under the Obama and Trump administrations – have cut Caracas off from US financial systems.
Economic hardship is rife, with a staggering 50% of people living in extreme poverty. Pervasive hopelessness has also led to one of the worst migrant crises in the world.
In a bid to offset a global energy crisis in 2022 as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, the Biden administration began lifting some sanctions on the Venezuelan oil sector. So how are things faring? We look at GDP per capita and corresponding oil prices since 1999.
COVID lockdowns in Colombia forcing refugees to return to Venezuela
GZERO World takes viewers to Colombia as Venezuelan refugees risk everything once again—this time to cross back into their home country. As pandemic lockdowns and economic downturn threaten jobs and livelihood in Colombia, many are left with no choice but to return to Venezuela and an uncertain future.
Kendry Fernando tells his story as he walks hundreds of miles with his family, looking for work, and considering a return home to repressive conditions in Maduro's Venezuela.