Venezuelanvoices.org
A tense calm prevailed as the Venezuelan presidential elections began early this morning. As has been constantly denounced, the process has been fraudulent from the beginning, so it is to be expected the outcome will not be any different. In arbitrary fashion, the government prevented the nomination of candidates from the traditional right-wing opposition, such as the winner of the opposition primaries, María Corina Machado and her successor Corina Yoris. It also prevented the candidacy of journalist Manuel Isidro Molina, supported by leftist organizations. In an exiled population of more than seven million people, almost a quarter of the country's population, less than 1% can vote, due to the imposition of extra legal requirements to limit the vote abroad.
There was an open police persecution against the opposition campaign, including the arrest of individuals for selling food or renting rooms to candidate Edmundo González, a former diplomat who served as Venezuelan ambassador in Argentina during the Chávez administration and who is now the presidential candidate supported by Maria Corina Machado. Although there are nine opposition candidacies of center-right and right wing sectors, the generalized perception is that the only candidate not manipulated by the government is González. By virtue of this alone he agglutinates almost the totality of the opposition electoral support.
Some international and corporate media have presented the elections under the light of an unprecedented event in Venezuelan politics, either because they are seen as competitive elections or because of the supposed unity of the capitalist opposition. In reality in Venezuela there have been elections with regularity during the twenty-five years that Chavismo has been in power. What changed since 2015, when chavismo lost the parliamentary elections by a wide margin, losing two thirds of the National Assembly, is that elections have been designed to prevent a repeat of that eventuality. Also since then popular support for the government has been a rather small minority, ranging from 10% to around 20% according to different polls, as the economic crisis has raged long before US sanctions and the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic impacted it. It is estimated that under Maduro the economy has shrunk by 80% and millions of Venezuelans have had to emigrate for survival.
In 2017 the government crushed popular protests against its dictatorial turn and in 2018 it held elections for a National Constituent Assembly in which the company in charge of electronic vote transmission, Smartmatic, which had that role for almost two decades, denounced an inconsistency of more than one million votes between the number of votes transmitted by its platform and those announced by the government, the first exposure of an openly fraudulent election. As a result, Smartmatic was removed from subsequent electoral processes.
There is practically no international observation and there have been obstacles for the accreditation of opposition delegates to stand as witnesses in the counting of the votes, crucial to avoid fraud. In this context, what is to some extent new for the post 2017 context is that there have been large opposition mobilizations as a part of the González campaign. While many analysts argue that an opposition victory by a wide margin would force the government to concede defeat, citing alleged intentions of economic normalization by the chavista bourgeoisie or even pressure from allied governments such as Brazil.
Maduro himself has been very clear, not only with his deeds, but also with his words. In an oft-quoted July 19 speech in Barquisimeto, Maduro stated that if the right wing were to win the elections there would be "a bloodbath" because "the people" would not let "the country be taken away from them". He also said that the people would not accept losing "Guayana Esequiba", the territory claimed by Maduro which constitutes more than two thirds of neighboring Guyana, and concluded saying: "We are a military power, we are a police power, and the civilian-military-police unity, I say so as a leader, will not let this homeland be taken away". Brazilian President Lula da Silva criticized Maduro's statement and called on him to leave power if he loses the elections.
But Maduro said, for once, the truth: he does not represent the power of the workers, a democratic or socialist power, but the power of the bourgeois military and police. For that reason, the real arbiter of the elections is not the popular vote, it is the military. What is most important is what happens after the elections, whether there will be protests large enough to divide the repressive forces. It remains to be seen.
The left and the elections
The left, banned from any direct electoral participation by the regime, has not had a unified tactic in the face of the elections. The Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), the traditional Stalinist party, one of the oldest in the country, called to vote for the center-right candidate Enrique Márquez. But it is not a critical support, as a mere vote against the government, rather PCV has fully integrated into Márquez's campaign and incredibly maintains that it could constitute an alternative pole from the government and the opposition, and even develop a "workers' government". The PCV supported Chávez during his years in power and also supported Maduro for several years, claiming they were antiimperialist and socialist, until the break with Maduro in recent years. Due to the confiscation of its electoral credentials by the government, the votes for the PCV will be added to Maduro's candidacy, not to Márquez. Former Chavista mayor of Caracas Juan Barreto also supports Márquez.
Several former Chavista ministers and leftist and NGO activists signed a manifesto calling to vote for Edmundo González, denouncing government repression and expressing their expectation of reestablishing the 1999 Constitution. They argue that this would make possible an economic recovery and the enforcement of democratic rights, although they do not relate these objectives with the program of González or the political forces that support him. Machado and most parties which support González are not known for a defense of social rights, but for advocating international sanctions against the country, blaming the ills of Chavista capitalism on "socialism".
Another sector, coming from Chavismo, has grouped under the slogan "The other campaign", taken from the Zapatista Army of National Liberation of Mexico. They state that their "candidate" is constituted by "the struggles of the people" and believe that regardless of how people vote "little will change". They call to constitute an "alternative of the exploited ones", although in a rather abstract and programmatically undefined manner. Their organizers have clarified that they do not call to vote nor to abstain.
Finally, Trotskyist organizations like the PSL (not to be confused with the US based campist organization), MS and LTS, as well as the PPT, another party whose electoral credentials were confiscated by the government, have called for a null vote, under the slogan "The working class has no candidate". They raise social and economic demands, such as freedom of association and the increase of the minimum wage, which at present is less than four dollars per month. It is a campaign against the current in an election that is not indifferent to the enormous majority of the popular sectors and the Venezuelan working class. It can be said that it is the very situation of regression of the working class, decimated by the Chavista government, which is reflected in the weakness and marginality of the Venezuelan socialist left.
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