Here’s What the Media Isn’t Telling You About the Venezuelan Election

by BreakThrough News / July 31st, 2024

“The media is lying to you about the Venezuelan election,” begins
BreakThrough News reporter about what is undeniably another US-sponsored coup to try and overthrow the Venezuelan people’s desire as expressed through an election.

BreakThrough News is a nonprofit media that tells the untold stories of resistance from poor and working-class communities. At present, five corporations dominate the media landscape, including 90% of what we read, watch, listen to, and depend on for information about the world. Nowhere among the headlines do we hear the perspectives of working people and movements for social justice. Our mission is to break through the static, disinformation and fluff. Read other articles by BreakThrough News, or visit BreakThrough News's website.

 The Venezuelan People Stay With the Bolivarian Revolution

by Vijay Prashad

 July 31, 2024
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Photograph Source: Wilfredor – CC0

On July 28, the 70th birthday of Hugo Chávez (1954-2013), Nicolás Maduro Moros won the Venezuelan presidential election, the fifth since the Bolivarian Constitution was ratified in 1999. In January 2025, Maduro will start his third six-year term as president. He took over the reins of the Bolivarian Revolution after the death of Chávez from pelvic cancer in 2013. Since the death of Chávez, Maduro has faced several challenges: to build his own legitimacy as president in the place of a charismatic man who came to define the Bolivarian Revolution; to tackle the collapse of oil prices in mid-2014, which negatively impacted Venezuela’s state revenues (over 90 percent of which was from oil exports); and to manage a response to the unilateral, illegal sanctions deepened on Venezuela by the United States as oil prices declined. These negative factors weighed heavily on the Maduro government, which has now been in office for a decade after being re-elected through the ballot box in 2018 and now in 2024.

From Maduro’s first election victory in 2013, the increasingly far-right opposition began to reject the electoral process and complain about irregularities in the system. Interviews I have held over the past decade with conservative politicians have made it clear that they recognize both the ideological grip of Chavismo over the working class of Venezuela and the organizational power not only of Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela but of the networks of Chavismo that run from the communes (1.4 million strong) to youth organizations. About half of Venezuela’s voting population is reliably wedded to the Bolivarian project, and no other political project in Venezuela has the kind of election machine built by the forces of the Bolivarian revolution. That makes winning an election for the anti-Chávez forces impossible. To that end, their only path is to malign Maduro’s government as corrupt and to complain that the elections are not fair. After Maduro’s victory—by a margin of 51.2 percent to 44.2 percent—this is precisely what the far-right opposition has been trying to do, egged on by the United States and a network of far-right and pro-U.S. governments in South America.

Europe Needs Venezuelan Oil

The United States has been trying to find a solution to a problem of its own making. Having placed severe sanctions against both Iran and Russia, the United States now cannot easily find a source of energy for its European partners. Liquified natural gas from the United States is expensive and not sufficient. What the U.S. would like is to have a reliable source of oil that is easy to process and in sufficient quantities. Venezuelan oil fits the requirements, but given the U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, this oil cannot be found in the European market. The United States has created a trap from which it finds few solutions.

In June 2022, the U.S. government allowed Eni SpA (Italy) and Repsol SA (Spain) to transport Venezuelan oil to the European market to compensate for the loss of Russian oil deliveries. This allowance revealed Washington’s shift in strategy regarding Venezuela. No longer was it going to be possible to suffocate Venezuela by preventing exports of oil, since this oil was needed as a result of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Since June 2022, the United States has been trying to calibrate its need for this oil, its antipathy to the Bolivarian Revolution, and its relations with the far-right opposition in Venezuela.

The U.S. and the Venezuelan Far-Right

The emergence of Chavismo—the politics of mass action to build socialism in Venezuela—transformed the political scenario in the country. The old parties of the right (Acción Democrática and COPEI) collapsed after 40 years of alternating power. In the 2000 and 2006 elections, the opposition to Chávez was provided not by the right, but by dissenting center-left forces (La Causa R and Un Nuevo Tiempo). The Old Right faced a challenge from the New Right, which was decidedly pro-capitalist, anti-Chavista, and pro-U.S.; this group formed a political platform called La Salida or The Exit, which referred to their desired exit from the Bolivarian Revolution. The key figures here were Leopoldo López, Antonio Ledezma, and María Corina Machado, who led violent protests against the government in 2014 (López was arrested for incitement to violence and now lives in Spain; a U.S. government official in 2009 said he is “often described as arrogant, vindictive, and power-hungry”). Ledezma moved to Spain in 2017 and was—with Corina Machado—a signatory of the far-rightMadrid Charter, an anti-communist manifesto organized by the Spanish far-right party, Vox. Corina Machado’s political project is underpinned by the proposal to privatize Venezuela’s oil company.

Since the death of Chávez, Venezuela’s right wing has struggled with the absence of a unified program and with a mess of egotistical leaders. It fell to the United States to try and shape the opposition into a political project. The most comical attempt was the elevation in January 2019 of an obscure politician named Juan Guaidó to be the president. That maneuver failed and in December 2022, the far-right opposition removed Guaidó as its leader. The removal of Guaidó allowed for direct negotiations between the Venezuelan government and the far-right opposition, which had since 2019 hoped for U.S. military intervention to secure them in power in Caracas.

The U.S. pressured the increasingly intransigent far-right to hold talks with the Venezuelan government in order to allow the U.S. to reduce sanctions and let Venezuelan oil go into European markets. This pressure resulted in the Barbados Agreement of October 2023, in which the two sides agreed to a fair election in 2024 as the basis for the slow withdrawal of the sanctions. The elections of July 28 are the outcome of the Barbados process. Even though María Corina Machado was barred from running, she effectively ran against Maduro through her proxy candidate Edmundo González and lost in a hard-fought election.

Twenty-three minutes after the polls closed, U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris—and now a presidential candidate in the November elections in the United States—put out a tweet conceding that the far-right had lost. It was an early sign that the United States—despite making noises about election fraud—wanted to move past their allies in the far-right, find a way to normalize relations with the Venezuelan government and allow the oil to flow to Europe. This tendency of the U.S. government has frustrated the far-right, which turned to other far-right forces across Latin America for support, and which knows that its remaining political argument is about election fraud. If the U.S. government wants to get Venezuelan oil to Europe it will need to abandon the far-right and accommodate the Maduro government. Meanwhile, the far-right has taken to the streets through armed gangs who want to repeat the guarimba (barricade) disruptions of 2017.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad’s most recent book (with Noam Chomsky) is The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan and the Fragility of US Power (New Press, August 2022).

Venezuelans Re-elect Maduro

by Roger D. Harris / July 29th, 2024

July 29, 2024, Caracas, Venezuela.  Shortly before midnight, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, announced the re-election of Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro. Like the proverbial boy who cried wolf, the US-backed and funded opposition cried fraud.

Maduro won with 51.2% of the vote. His nearest rival, the US-backed candidate Edmundo Gonzalez trailed by 7%.

While the US corporate press refers to the “opposition” as if it were a unified bloc, eight other names appeared on the ballot. Unlike the US, where most of the electorate is polarized around two major parties, the fractious opposition in Venezuela is split into many mutually hostile camps whose dislike of the ruling Socialist Party is matched by their loathing for each other. And this is despite millions of US tax-payer dollars used to try to unify a cabal that would carry Washington’s water.

Sore losers

In the quarter century since Hugo Chavez initiated the Bolivarian Revolution when he was elected president in 1998, the Chavistas have won all but two of some thirty national elections. The opposition celebrated when they won a national referendum and the 2015 National Assembly contest. But every other time, they lost to the coalition led by the PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela).

All of these contests employed the same electoral system of multiple public audits, transparent counting, and an electronic vote backed with paper ballots. The system is incontrovertibly fraud-proof with over half of the ballot stations audited for verification of the electronic and paper results.  Former US President Jimmy Carter, whose electoral monitoring organization observed over ninety elections,  declared Venezuela’s system the best in the world.

Beyond the accusations, concrete proof of fraud had not been forthcoming in the past even though the data was publicly available.

July 28, 2024 Election

I was one of 910 internationals representing over one hundred countries invited to Venezuela to accompany this election. On July 28  I visited polling stations in the state of Miranda.

I observed long but orderly lines of people going to the polls. At each one of the individual mesas (rooms at a polling station), representatives of political parties sat to monitor the process. I spoke to representatives of Maduro’s Socialist Party (PSUV) as well as other parties. All expressed confidence in the fraud-proof nature of their electoral system. In fact, they are very proud of their system regardless of political affiliation.

According to news reports, there were cyberattacks on the electoral system. At some polling stations, far-right opposition elements reportedly attacked electoral workers in attempts to disrupt the process.

By my experience and observation,  the polls can best be described as festive. Seeing our international invitee credentials, which we wore on lanyards around our necks, we were universally greeted with shouts of bienvenido (welcome), V-signs, and applause. These were clearly a people with great civic pride.

This reception was the same in “popular” Chavista neighborhoods as well as wealthier ones. Some hoped for “change” and others for continuing the Bolivarian Revolution. But all freely and enthusiastically participated in the electoral process.

The accusations of fraud were not reflected by the actions of the people on the ground as evidenced by their participation and enthusiasm.

Days before the election

July 25, the last day of official campaigning, was marked by the final political rallies. The far-right drew an estimated 100,000. I attended the Maduro rally of some one million. As far as I could see, people had jammed the main boulevards of Caracas. Clearly the Chavistas have a vast and dedicated base.

And they are wildly supportive of their current president Nicolas Maduro, who is seen as carrying on the legacy of the deceased founder of the Bolivarian project, Hugo Chavez, whose birthday is the same as this election day.

But it goes deeper than that. As the slogan yo soy Chavez (I am Chavez) indicates, the base sees the Bolivarian project not simply as one of their political leadership but more so as a collective endeavor.

The real electoral interference

Far greater than any accusation of fraud manufactured by the opposition is the much more significant interference in the electoral process by Washington.

The vote for continuing the Bolivarian Revolution represents a mandate for national sovereignty. Venezuelans went to the polls knowing that a vote for the incumbent means no relief from US unilateral coercive measures. These so-called “sanctions” have been part of Washington’s regime-change campaign explicitly designed to asphyxiate the Venezuelan economy and turn the people against their government.

President Maduro says, “We are not anyone’s colony” and the majority of Venezuelans evidently agree.

Roger D. Harris is with the US Peace Council and the 39-year-old human rights organization Task Force on the Americas. Read other articles by Roger.

Trudeau’s Failure in Venezuela

by Yves Engler / July 29th, 2024

Yesterday Venezuelans voted for Nicolás Maduro to continue as president. The election highlights one of Justin Trudeau’s most embarrassing foreign policy failures and a lesson on media and government propaganda.

According to Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, Maduro received 51% of the vote. His main challenger, Edmundo Gonzalez, garnered 44% while 59% of eligible voters cast ballots.

Without presenting any evidence, the opposition cried foul. But they’ve done so after basically every election loss over the past 20 years (though not their wins).

The vote is the first presidential poll since a brazen Canadian-backed campaign to oust Maduro. In a bid to elicit “regime change,” Ottawa worked to isolate Caracas, imposed illegal sanctions, took the Maduro government to the International Criminal Court, financed an often-unsavoury opposition and decided that a marginal right-wing opposition politician was the country’s legitimate president.

On January 23, 2019, Juan Guaidó declared himself president of Venezuela in a Caracas park. The same day then foreign minister Chrystia Freeland formally recognized the little-known opposition politician. In subsequent days Canadian diplomats boasted to reporters that they played an important role in uniting large swaths of the Venezuelan opposition behind the plan to ratchet up tensions by proclaiming the new head of the opposition-dominated National Assembly president. They also told the Globe and Mail and Associated Press that Canada played an important role in building international diplomatic support for claiming the relatively marginal politician was president.

Amidst the exuberance the Liberals quickly organized a meeting of the Lima Group of states opposed to the Venezuelan government. At the February 4, 2019, meeting in Ottawa Trudeau declared, “the international community must immediately unite behind the interim president.” The post Lima Group “Ottawa Declaration” called on Venezuela’s armed forces “to demonstrate their loyalty to the interim president” by removing the elected president.

(Despite the opposition boycotting the May 2018 poll, Maduro received a higher proportion of the overall vote than leaders in the US, Canada and elsewhere. For instance, in 2019, Trudeau’s Liberals received 33% of the vote with 66% of eligible voters casting their ballots, which amounted to 22% of the adult population. Maduro received 67% of votes cast with 41% of eligible voters participating, which equaled 27% of the population.)

About a year before the poll Canada founded the anti-Maduro Lima Group coalition with Peru. A year later Canada and five like-minded South American nations asked the International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor — the first time a member state was brought before the ICC by other members — to investigate the Maduro government. During this period Ottawa also severed diplomatic relations with Caracas and imposed four rounds of sanctions on Venezuelan officials. While ostensibly targeted at individuals, Canadian sanctions deterred companies from doing business in Venezuela. They also helped legitimate more devastating US actions. A recent front page Washington Post article detailed the impact of US sanctions played in Venezuela’s economic collapse.

Trudeau and Freeland were at the forefront of the anti-Maduro campaign. In the weeks after Guaidó declared himself president, Canada’s prime minister called the leaders of France, Spain, Paraguay, Ireland, Italy and others to convince them to join Canada’s campaign against the Venezuelan government. When Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited Ottawa in April 2019 Canada’s post meeting release noted, “during the visit, Prime Minister Abe announced Japan’s endorsement of the Ottawa Declaration on Venezuela.”

At the end of that month Guaidó, opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez and others sought to stoke a military uprising in Caracas. Hours into the early morning effort Freeland tweeted, “watching events today in Venezuela very closely. The safety and security of Juan Guaidó and Leopoldo López must be guaranteed. Venezuelans who peacefully support Interim President Guaidó must do so without fear of intimidation or violence.” She followed that up with a statement to the press noting, “Venezuelans are in the streets today demonstrating their desire for a return to democracy” and a video calling on Venezuelans to rise up. She later promoted a Lima Group statement labeling the attempted putsch an effort “to restore democracy” and demanded the military “cease being instruments of the illegitimate regime for the oppression of the Venezuelan people.”

While this failed insurrection marked the end of any realistic chance Guaidó had at becoming president, Trudeau openly supported him for months longer. In January 2020 Guaidó was fêted in Ottawa, meeting the PM, international development minister and foreign minister. A picture of Trudeau and Guaidó taking a selfie together was released by the Prime Minister’s Office and Trudeau declared, “I commend Interim President Guaidó for the courage and leadership he has shown in his efforts to return democracy to Venezuela, and I offer Canada’s continued support.”

Since then Guaidó has moved to the US and the Lima group has become dormant. But the Trudeau government hasn’t formally reversed its position or restarted diplomatic relations or withdrawn sanctions.

On the third anniversary of Guaidó’s presidential self-declaration an open letter was released demanding Trudeau stop recognizing Guaidó, end sanctions and reset relations with Venezuela. It was signed by 2 MPs, 4 former MPs and 50 prominent individuals. The government should heed its call.

Very little to none of the above important context will appear in the mainstream media over what looks to be yet another ongoing US-led attempt to destabilize the Venezuelan government.

The bottom line? Neither the Canadian government nor media should be considered arbiters of truth regarding events in Venezuela. They have repeatedly proven themselves self-interested liars and agents of US hegemony.

Yves Engler is the author of 12 books. His latest book is Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People's History of the Canadian Military . Read other articles by Yves.