Phantom of Right-Wing Electoral Abstentionism Returns to Venezuela

Misión Verdad – Jan 21, 2025

Venezuela’s extremist sector, led by María Corina Machado, has returned to electoral abstentionism. The coordinator of Vente Venezuela has called for a boycott of the next elections in Venezuela through a video that she released on social media last Sunday. In the piece, she asserted that “the elections were on July 28 (2024). That day the people chose… Until that result comes into force, it is not appropriate to participate in elections of any kind. Going to vote again and again without respecting the results is not defending the vote, it is distorting the popular vote.”

For its part, in subordination to Machado and the anti-electoral threats that she has initiated, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) insists on ignoring and attempting to discredit the public institutions, which is leaving the coalition of opposition parties without room for action in a year that will be characterized by the holding of three Constitutional electoral processes.

The municipal, regional, and legislative elections coincide this year. However, it is expected that they will not be held on the same date. Since last October, the National Assembly (AN) has advanced, through the Special Commission for the Review of Electoral Laws towards a space for political dialogue that seeks, among other objectives, to propose a schedule to the National Electoral Council (CNE) that will facilitate each electoral process.

The PUD has been the only political formation, of the 38 registered with the National Electoral Council (CNE), which has been absent from the meetings of this commission.

Self-exclusion as the only option?
Between 24 governors, 335 mayors, 277 deputies, state legislators, and councilors, including substitutes, some 5,000 positions will be elected in 2025. However, the PUD has been absent from the dialogues due to its refusal to acknowledge Venezuelan institutions. Machado and the former opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González insist on delegitimizing the past elections but did not bring the evidence of their supposed electoral triumph to the Supreme Court of Justice when it was requested.

The position of both has not generated consensus within the broad universe of oppositions, which perceives the threat that succumbing to Machado’s pressures implies being left out of the political game.

However, the New Era party (Un Nuevo Tiempo, UNT), led by Manuel Rosales, has been a timid character in the dialogue thus far. On January 14, the secretary of the state of Zulia, Juan Barboza, attended a work session of the aforementioned special commission on behalf of the governor.

Some sources have reported a debate within the PUD regarding participation in the upcoming elections, which may indicate a rift between its leaders. Self-exclusion is on the horizon, and as in 2005, 2018, and 2020, this will have a negative political effect for extremist sectors.

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A clash with reality
On a path in which Machado has resorted to boxing language and is debating between offering quick-track solutions and keeping expectations high for regime change, the PUD is running out of possibilities for political negotiation—not only with the Venezuelan government but with the opposition sector that is active in the AN, which they have called “alacarnes“. Luis Eduardo Martínez, a member of this sector, presides over the legislative subcommittee in the Commission designated for electoral reform, and it has already put its proposals on the table.

The discussion on internal unity is still alive but disjointed by the personality of the coordinator of Vente Venezuela. The demonstrably criminal agenda of Leopoldo López (via Guaidó), the silence of the Allup/Capriles/Rosales axis, and the struggles for control of the electoral ballots have generated exposed fractures with signs of irreversibility, to which is added that, for the extremist sector, the request for sanctions and the promotion of a military intervention are “points of honor”.

González’s “tour” through some countries in the region has revealed that international support, as an end in itself, is not, until now, a real and viable option. Added to this is the question of whether or not his ally Marco Rubio, already confirmed Secretary of State of the incoming Trump administration in the US, could have room to maneuver.

Reality, which is richer than theory, speaks harshly to them. In the same days that Juan Pablo Guanipa declared that, in the insurrectional plan for 9 January, attendance at the convened rallies and the military conspiracy failed, a survey by Hinterlaces revealed that 92% of the population rejected the idea of a military invasion to overthrow the government of President Maduro.

The division and conflict of criteria of the opposition in Venezuela has an existential character, and the return of Donald Trump to the White House is deepening them to new levels.

Alone in the ring?
On his X account, Guanipa established three key points to overthrow the national government: internal pressure, international pressure, and “undermining of the bases”, obviously trying to take advantage of the tailwind that Trump represents. The snapshot of this perspective has shown that the calls decrease with each fiasco. They have not managed to create a sufficiently solid international support, and their followers move between nebulous promises where discouragement and skepticism reign.

It is the same script, of stumbling on the same stone, that of the understanding of politics as a one-dimensional space whose axes of action reside in the interests of foreign powers. In the second of the seven “principles” proposed by Machado in her most recent video, she stated that “whoever is not part of the solution is part of the problem,” with which she seeks to further condition the sectors that have the prospect of accumulating power at the local, regional, and parliamentary level in 2025.

In the boxing language used by Machado, everything seems to indicate that, from the opposition corner, a towel will be thrown in, and she will be left alone.

(Misión Verdad)

Translation: Orinoco Tribune

OT/KW/SL