Venezuela’s Maduro just tightened his grip on power. What comes next?

jimmydoreisalefty , 8 hours ago

Maduro claimed 51 percent of the vote, with González earning 44 percent according to the national electoral commission. But González was quick to challenge those results, with his party claiming their exit polls showed the opposition winning as much as 70 percent of the vote. Several countries, including the US, have cast doubt on Maduro’s victory given alleged irregularities, and the fact that international election observers were, in many cases, unable to perform their duties.

Sunday’s results mean Maduro seems headed for a third term in office — something that wasn’t possible before his predecessor and mentor Hugo Chávez amended the constitution in 2009 to remove presidential term limits.

But Maduro seemed to backtrack on his authoritarian tendencies in October 2023, when his government agreed to hold free and competitive elections in exchange for further easing of US sanctions (Chevron has been permitted to operate in Venezuela since 2022).

“If Maduro had both the capacity and the desire to totally shut this thing down, he would have done it by now — so he’s either lacking the will or the capacity,” Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin American studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Vox. “My guess is he’s lacking the capacity, there’s some kind of internal politics within Chavismo, some kind of internal constraints keeping him from taking more radical action like banning González or arresting María Corina Machado.”

Maduro’s Chavismo, rather than being practiced as a consistent socialist ideology, is more about understanding the US as interlopers in Venezuelan politics — and the opposition as their proxy. That’s not totally without foundation, given a bizarre 2020 coup attempt that involved Americans and the US’s extremely antagonistic stance towards Maduro, with the Trump administration supporting a rival who declared he was the true president.

But what that response might look like is unclear. The US reimposed sanctions in April, after loosening them last October on the basis of Maduro’s concession to hold elections. And the Biden administration gave up Maduro ally Alex Saab in a prisoner swap deal earlier this year — depriving the US of key leverage.

After Chávez was elected in 1998, poverty decreased due to socialist government programs, but his mismanagement of the oil sector — plus a variety of US sanctions — meant that, over time, there wasn’t enough money to support those programs. Chávez also seriously damaged democratic institutions, yet he was still highly popular among Venezuelans, especially those in the working class. Maduro, once Chávez’s bodyguard, continued and even accelerated Chávez’s authoritarian tendencies, without really being able to uphold the socialist measures that made his predecessor popular. Venezuela’s economy has spiraled particularly since he took office, resulting in a surge of migration out of the country — to neighboring Colombia and to the US.

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wurzelgummidge , 7 hours ago

What comes next?

NED sponsored ‘student’ protests, probably. Gotta get some democracy to all those oil reserves

Bernie_Sandals , 6 hours ago

Yes, because no population on this planet ever acts against their dictators without the U.S. forcing them to do so.

wurzelgummidge , 6 hours ago

Yes, because no population on this planet ever acts against their dictators without the U.S. funding them

FTFY

Gsus4 , 6 hours ago

That explains the Chinese revolution, the Mexican revolution, hell the French revolution too :)

wurzelgummidge , 6 hours ago

It certainly helps to explain America’s long history of regime change and destabilisation initiatives

Gsus4 , 5 hours ago

Therefore stolen elections by leftists are allowed forever.

wurzelgummidge , 5 hours ago

by leftists

Nah, only the right are allowed to steal elections, you win.

Gsus4 , 5 hours ago

no, those we agree on, it is you who are inconsistent and consider leftist coups good for some ideological reason.

wurzelgummidge , 5 hours ago

we

We = US/Nato + poodles and sycophants

The only reason “we” care is because of oil. If you think it is anything to do with democracy I’d like to remind you that the tooth fairy comes at 8.00pm

Gsus4 , 5 hours ago

Fuck oil. Venezuela’s is meant to stay in the ground anyway, not ramp up, we’re already at 1.5C. I guess that is a good reason to support Maduro’s retardedness.

wurzelgummidge , 5 hours ago

Fuck oil

'murica’s war machine would be severely impeded without oil. Also controlling the flow of oil affects the ability of countries the US doesn’t like to defend themselves from aggression

Bernie_Sandals , 5 hours ago (edited 5 hours ago)

If we only want to overthrow leftists because of economic resources.

Then why has the Biden administration kept good relations with the socialist president of Chile, one of the world’s largest producers of cobalt, instead of overthrowing him like we did with Allende?

Why did Biden save Brazil, an oil producing nation, and it’s socialist president from a fascist coup?

Bernie_Sandals , 5 hours ago

It’s not even a leftist thing, the U.S. opposes right-wing power grabs and coups abroad as well, and has for at least two decades.

8000gnat , 6 hours ago

three pre-cold war examples

did you want to try again?

Gsus4 , 6 hours ago (edited 3 hours ago)

When your government botches an election in such a spectacular way, it is expected that the population would react in any country. I don’t know where you live, but if some protofascist steals an election e.g. Bolsonaro/Trump, we will both be out there rioting with good reason, it won’t be because the CIA paid us.

Eril , 2 hours ago

Or in other words: Potential protesters are not sitting at home like “Oh man, I so want to protest this shit, but the CIA didn’t pay me yet, so I can’t :(”

Bernie_Sandals , 5 hours ago

Plenty of revolutions have happened, before, during, and after the Cold War without U.S. support, the U.S. actively opposed the breakup of the Soviet Union for example, and yet it happened, and several democracies were created from it’s downfall, with little influence from the U.S.

dictators without the U.S. funding them FTFY

Even if the U.S. government did regularly fund protests/resistance against dictatorships, why would that be a bad thing? As long as it’s not singlehandedly deciding on regime change like in Iraq, I don’t see anything morally wrong with supporting pro-democracy causes within dictatorships.

Gsus4 , 6 hours ago

Yea, and it was the CIA who stole the election too to make Maduro look bad. Those machiavellian americans!

PhlubbaDubba , 7 hours ago

How the hell does a dictator tighten their grip on power?

Is it the difference between maintaining appearances and dropping the façade? Because that’s all it could ever seem like IMO.

Gsus4 , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

Before the election, nobody was sure if Maduro would leave if he lost, because Chavistas could win elections in the past. Now it’s clear that they can’t and won’t leave…they didn’t even have a fig leaf of faked stats ready to at least save face. It is officially an unashamed dictatorship now.