Today, Venezuela goes to the polls and Nicolás Maduro is vying for his third term since he succeeded his leader Hugo Chávez, when the latter succumbed to cancer in 2013. Chávez, of course, had led an unsuccessful coup in 1992 and on his release from prison won the election of 1999 and led an even more profound revolution with the Socialist Party he founded. He was immensely popular with the poor and powerless as he upended the social and political order with a new constitution that emphasised a bottom-up socialist development path.
He trenchantly criticised the older political leadership as “oligarchs” and took on the US, which he claimed had buttressed their rule even as they benefitted from Venezuela’s oil reserves. He would go on to nationalise the oil industry that had created the wealthiest country in Latin America, but that then led to the unravelling of the economy. He killed the Golden Goose.
Maduro is a product – a “Chavista” – of the idiosyncratic socialist “Chavismo” political ideology created by Chávez. He inherited the goodwill of the latter, but soon dissipated it along with the economy and replaced the populism with authoritarian measures that exacerbated the meltdown. Inflation skyrocketed – even as unemployment followed suit with the closure of businesses that could not remain viable. The middle class collapsed into a black hole and resorted to fleeing to all the surrounding countries as refugees. As Guyanese did during the Burnhamite dictatorship. Today, eight million Venezuelans – one-quarter of the population – are refugees – with Colombia bearing the brunt. There are estimated to be 60,000 Venezuelan refugees in our country, along with 600,000 who have trekked through Central America to the US.
While couching its policies within the framework of protecting democracy, the US supported the Opposition to the Maduro regime in their 2018 elections, which were widely condemned as being rigged in favour of the incumbent, even as the Opposition boycotted. The US imposed sanctions, which exacerbated the internally-driven contradictions of the Chavismo policies, but allowed Maduro to reiterate Chávez’s criticism of the US as “the Great Satan”. The Western nations eventually declared the Opposition Head of the National Assembly, Juan Guaidó as President, but the manoeuvre ultimately failed.
All of these issues dominated the present campaign between the united Opposition – led by a 74-year-old retired diplomat Edmondo Gonzales – after the Maduro-dominated Supreme Court banned the most popular Opposition Leader, Maria Corina Machado, from participating. This move, however, did not dim the popularity of the Opposition as Machado campaigned assiduously for Gonzalez who is seen as her place-holder. Most of the polls show that the Opposition is leading Maduro’s socialist party by at least 20 percentage points. It would thus appear that Maduro’s “rally round the flag” tactic to raise the Venezuelan border controversy and annex our Essequibo to bolster his support has failed miserably.
However, most analysts doubt that Maduro will relinquish power through the ballot box and this is where we could be dragged back into the mess as Maduro calls upon his allies in the army to put down the Opposition supporters who would be protesting the rigging. Maduro, in a preemptive move, has already declared that it would be the Opposition who would launch violence in the streets. He warned of a “bloodbath” to which President Lula of Brazil was forced to confess this “frightened” him. Obviously, this was not a personal feeling of fear for his own person, but fear of any conflagration within Venezuela spreading through the region.
This is where we could be affected since Maduro has already set the stage for an incursion into Essequibo through the annexation now authorised by Venezuelan law. By the Constitution of Venezuela, the army is mandated to protect the territory of Venezuela. The voting will be completed by this evening and because voting machines are being used, the results should be declared tomorrow morning. We have to be on guard and our defence forces must be prepared for any eventuality.
