The July 28 presidential election in Venezuela brought record high voter turnout inspired by a heated campaign between the 11-year incumbent Nicolás Maduro and the opposition’s Edmundo González Urrutia.
As standard bearer of his predecessor Hugo Chavez’s socialist legacy with the moniker of dictator earned after his pretend reelection in 2018, Maduro went into Sunday’s election responsible for decades of democratic backsliding, crippling international economic sanctions attributed to that backsliding, increased crime, and violence.
The country’s heated social unrest, and unprecedented out-migration under the Chavismo model contributed to the huge voter turnout.
Despite the glaring evidence of the model’s failures, Maduro nevertheless pursued an electoral strategy focused on entrenched model continuity combined with an emphasis on framing the competition as one in which Venezuela’s national security is at stake under a threat of foreign intervention by the United States.
Maduro painted the opposition as mere handmaidens of the U.S. who, if they were to win the election, would reopen Venezuela to massive foreign intervention and destroy the nationalist socialist model fought for by Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). So tied to the statist redistributive model and enduring legacy of his mentor and the shadow Chavez continues to cast on him, the 61-year-old Maduro symbolically chose to schedule the election on what would have been Chavez’s 70th birthday.
Nearly all polls going into the election showed the opposition leading by wide margins of as much as 40 points—indicative of the electorate’s desperation for change in their everyday circumstances in Venezuela, where the cost of living continues to far exceed incomes in spite of recent stabilizations and a 4 percent GDP growth, yet not nearly enough to begin to erase more than a decade of GDP decline totaling more than 70 percent, hyperinflation, and the ostensible replacement of the bolivar with the U.S. dollar as the main form of currency exchanged on the street.
Against this dire backdrop, an unrelenting Maduro doubled down and attempted to paint the contrast between six more years of PSUV rule under his leadership and an opposition victory as one between PSUV stability versus “chaos” that would be brought by an “internationally-backed” opposition government. The opposition painted a stark contrast of its own, largely organized, if not personified, by veteran legislator and human rights advocate Marina Corina Machado, who, after having won last October’s opposition primary with 90 percent of the vote, was subsequently blocked from becoming its presidential candidate by a court that upheld a number of accusations of corruption made against her by Maduro.
Undeterred, Machado selected her proxy in former diplomat González, with both carrying out a tireless ground campaign of in-person rallies that reached far into rural areas to reach voters with their message of hope, change, and a return to a democratic and economically prosperous Venezuela that, in the words of González, would soon bear witness to the return of millions of Venezuelans stuck living abroad. González’s uplifting message is in glaring juxtaposition to Maduro’s warning of a “bloodbath” should it come to pass that he and PSUV were to lose the election.
Maduro’s declaration of an election victory with a vote margin of greater than 50 percent was not surprising.
In fact, this outcome was predictable considering that Maduro made no effort to negotiate with the opposition in anticipation of a regime transition and the need for accountability and reconciliation. When sorting out the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead following the election, a number of factors are at stake, two in particular.
First, there is the need for the opposition to pursue all legal means to challenge and obtain proof of the election results with the help of the international community to defend the democratic will of the Venezuelan electorate.
Optimistically, the election had been compared to that of the 1988 plebiscite in Chile that brought the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship there to an end. Yet with all regime transitions, and that is what Maduro’s still possible removal must be considered and analyzed as—a transition from an authoritarian to a democratic regime—negotiations must take place between the contesting parties, inclusive of the military, for both sides to declare the election legitimate.
Second, in contrast to 1988, the international political landscape for an outgoing leader like Maduro is far more complex when considering such factors as transitional justice, for example, and the high likelihood that Maduro will not be able to evade being held accountable for cases of violent oppression and repression and human rights violations, not to mention corruption and other crimes committed under his rule.
Absent an agreement between the parties, it’s quite possible the election results will be clouded by uncertainty in the weeks and months ahead, with a variety of scenarios, some more peaceful than others, playing out.
While Maduro counts on the continued support of the Venezuelan military and fellow dictators around the world like Russia’s Vladimir Putin to shore up his incumbency, the opposition is certain to proceed with tireless determination to ultimately prevail in democratically representing the political will of a majority of Venezuelans characteristic of its campaign slogan of “Hasta el final”—Until the end.
John Twichell is a lecturer in the University of Miami College of Arts and Sciences and director of the Latin American Studies Program.
