Of all the electoral victories won by “chavismo” during a quarter century in charge of Venezuela, its triumph in Sunday’s presidential poll is the most dubious.
The result announced by the electoral authorities declaring incumbent Nicolás Maduro the winner is, in the words of Chile’s leftist president Gabriel Boric, “hard to believe”.
While a credible exit poll agreed with opposition tallies that its candidate Edmundo González had won by at least 30 points, the national electoral council said Maduro took 51.2 per cent of the vote to win a third term in office.
This followed a polling day that passed off reasonably calmly, with no more than the usual irregularities that Venezuelans have come to expect in elections that are no longer free and fair as state institutions work incessantly to tilt contests in favour of chavismo, the socialist movement named after its founder and Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez.
But hopes that, despite all these obstacles, the overwhelming desire of Venezuelans, as measured in opinion polls, to remove an increasingly dictatorial regime that has murdered thousands and forced millions into exile following an unprecedented economic collapse would at last be respected died during the count on Sunday night.
Opposition observers had worked hard to monitor the tallies from local count centres. But once these went to the chavista-controlled central electoral authority any oversight over the process ended, as the Maduro regime had refused to allow credible international monitoring missions to accompany this central count.
It was here that the opposition says a 70 per cent to 30 per cent victory for González based on results it had been able to monitor was, after hours of an information blackout, transformed into a victory for Maduro. Once again chavismo’s triumphalism during the campaign in the face of every indication it was headed for defeat was vindicated, as were regional sceptics who said Maduro would never willingly give up power.
The opposition is demanding a full, transparent audit of the results which it says would show González won. But this is unlikely to happen unless the regime is brought under sufficient pressure. This might be difficult despite calls from a string of Latin American governments for the full results to be released.
Regional heavyweight Brazil notably refused to congratulate Maduro and instead echoed calls that the electoral authorities in Venezuela publish the breakdown of voting. Its left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has always sought to maintain lines of communication with Maduro. But the Venezuelan strongman insulted him during the closing stretch of the campaign after Lula criticised his threats of a bloodbath if he lost, emphasising the likely limits to regional pressure.
Domestically Maduro has shown he is more than willing to face down protests and has a state apparatus to do so. Dozens of protesters have been killed in previous rounds of street demonstrations and government death squads have killed thousands more in what a United Nations report said was a regime-orchestrated campaign to suppress dissent.
The election campaign showed a surprising level of public enthusiasm for the opposition after years of apathy following previous defeats imposed on it by the regime. But whether sufficient numbers of people will be willing to risk confrontation with the state’s security forces to have their votes respected will be seen in the coming days, should opposition leaders call for protests.
Maduro will also be confident the military leadership will remain loyal, as it has during past attempts to force him from power. It is deeply implicated in his regime’s criminality and previous efforts by the opposition to bring it over to its side have always ended in failure.
That said, the army is not a monolith. About half of the country’s 300 or so political prisoners are members of the armed forces and some in the high command must worry about how state repression and the economic collapse that have sent more than 7.7 million Venezuelans fleeing abroad have also impacted on military families as well as the military’s own capabilities and prospects for maintaining them in the future.
These could dim further if the United States responds to Sunday’s apparent fraud by swiftly reimposing sanctions it partially lifted after Maduro signed up to “free and fair” elections in the Barbados Accord last year. But Washington’s appetite to do so might be limited by the country’s own election cycle.
Its ability to use sanctions to hit Venezuelan oil exports -– one of the country’s few foreign currency earners – is undoubted. But whether it would quickly seek to up the economic pain that has fed into the migrant crisis on the US-Mexico border remains to be seen. Last year more than a quarter of a million Venezuelans crossed into the US from Mexico. Another wave of refugees heading north in the months before the US presidential election would risk re-enforcing a Republican attack line against the Democrats and their nominee, Kamala Harris.
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