Should Venezuelans Accept the Opposition’s Claim that Maduro Lost? A Response to Alejandro Velasco

By Nino Pagliccia – Aug 13, 2024

A recent article by Alejandro Velasco published in The Nation asks What’s Next for the Left in Venezuela? But what appears to be an invitation to an open political dialogue is quickly dispelled in the byline, “If revolution is to win again in Venezuela, its backers at home and abroad must first recognize that they lost.”

In fact, the whole article is a classic example of Plato’s definition of rhetoric as “the art of enchanting the soul.” Mr. Velasco says supporters of the Bolivarian Revolution should resign themselves to having lost the election. He does not bother with the nuances of political context and Venezuelan electoral law and process. Instead, he goes on to repeat the same untruths about the Maduro government that we have heard in an unrelenting succession before and after the election on July 28; or before and after every one of the 31 elections carried out under Chavismo in 25 years. He pulls out of a hat evidence that is nonexistent about an electoral victory of the extreme right-wing opposition to convince Chavistas of their loss.

The real intention, however, seems to be to deceive by using a seemingly leftist gloss to accept the unfounded contentions of the US-backed far right.

The article begins: “At a glance, it seems all too familiar. Another hotly contested election in Venezuela, another victory for the long-besieged Chavista government, another round of fraud allegations by the US-backed opposition.” The article should have ended there with that fairly accurate report of the July 28 election.

As President Maduro stated in one of his addresses, “we have already seen this movie”. Mr. Velasco offers his review of the “movie” based on what he describes as a “well-worn script that has played out repeatedly for nearly 25 years,” and then proceeds to present his own script of the fiction movie he would like his audience to see where the heroes (backers of Chavismo) must commit political suicide (recognize that they lost). That fantasy has no basis in reality.

Mr. Velasco makes very cursory concessions of continued opposition claims of fraud over the years by the Bolivarian government. He even recognizes “The US’s own efforts to oust Chávez and later Maduro [that] have ranged from targeted sanctions to funding a fictitious government-in-exile to launching a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign aimed at isolating Venezuela and strangling its economy.”

Conveniently, however, he makes no mention of the US-sponsored failed coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002, just three years after Chavez was elected president. That admission would have led to the conclusion that Washington has been obsessed with snuffing out the Bolivarian Revolution and Chavismo from the very beginning.

Maybe Mr. Velasco did not want to bring up the memory of the 2002 coup attempt for a good reason. During the 48-hour long presidency of Pedro Carmona a decree was quickly issued that abolished in one stroke the National Assembly, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Electoral Council, all municipal governments, all State governments, the central bank and every other single institution of the new Bolivarian government. One of the first signatories to the decree was none other than Maria Corina Machado. Yes. The same person that claims fraud in the 2024 election together with her proxy candidate Eduardo Gonzalez Urrutia, the “winner” of the election who has his own dark record as the alleged participant in the United States’ counterinsurgency project in El Salvador in 1979-1985.

In his article, Alejandro Velasco is asking everyone to simply trust “the opposition’s own online platform’s hosting copies of what appear to be over 80 percent of precinct returns giving opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez a two-to-one margin of victory” (emphasis ours). In other words, forget the constitutional authority of the National Electoral Council (CNE) established in Article 292 of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution and forget the fact that Eduardo Gonzalez Urrutia is in contempt for ignoring an injunction to appear in the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to present all of the original electoral voting records (actas).

Mr. Velasco ignores the fact that the actas are not meant for publication. They are only examined when there is a legal challenge to the results presented by the CNE. Interestingly, the Edmundo Gonzalez legal team has not presented any legal challenge to claim fraud to this day. It appears as if the Gonzalez team has opted to appoint themselves electoral authority against what is established in the Venezuelan constitution. This is grossly illegal and Venezuelan courts are in fact investigating if any laws have been broken.

The evidence of fraud presented in the article in The Nation is the “refusal by electoral authorities to release precinct level data for public scrutiny…as the law requires.” This may be evidence of inability to fulfill a legal obligation but certainly is not evidence of fraud, which would require a proper legal process to prove. Again, the opposition has decided not to pursue the legal path of inquiry, and they themselves are breaking the law.

The CNE has explained its inability for not being able to produce timely results as Article 146 of the Organic Electoral Law requires. The CNE has cited a well-documented massive cyberattack to their electoral system. Mr. Velasco demands “proof” that the cyberattack actually occurred but he does not require any proof about the veracity of the opposition’s produced results.

It is under those circumstances that Mr. Velasco suggests and expects that the majority that voted for Maduro’s re-election should just “recognize that they lost” and accept the “opposition claims that Maduro stole elections for a new six-year term of office.”

The slanders against President Nicolas Maduro in the article (e.g., extrajudicial killings, austerity, corruption, repression, and even dollarization)are the standard baseless accusations that have nothing to do with the recent elections but have a lot to do with demonizing Maduro.

There is not a single mention of the economic growth in the last more than three years in Venezuela with single digit inflation rate, expanded incentives for domestic and foreign investment, despite the US unilateral coercive measures (sanctions).

Deconstructing Serious Irregularities in the Voting Records Published by Venezuelan Opposition

President Maduro is trying to govern a country that is under 930 US unilateral coercive measures that are killing people. Surely Mr. Velasco has read the recent document by the Congressional Research Service titled, “Venezuela: Overview of U.S. Sanctions Policy” from which he has certainly copied the expression, “US sanctions have exacerbated Venezuela’s crisis” (emphasis ours). While he plays down the impact of “sanctions,” the document clearly states that the goal of “sanctions” has been to “dislodge” Maduro and alter the will of the people in order to produce a regime change .

Mr. Velasco pits the memory of Hugo Chavez versus Nicolas Maduro with the real intention of tearing both down, the very live Maduro of today and the powerful memory of Chavez. The article is a Trojan horse thrown in the Bolivarian Revolution camp with the intention to enchant the soul in the hope that some might heed to his call to “recognise that they lost” and surrender.

Mr. Velasco knows the true danger of his Trojan horse when he writes “[for] a democratic alternative to Chavismo, the opposition will need to operate within rather than purge the Chavista state” (emphasis ours). Does he really believe that the far right opposition will be willing to “operate within” Chavismo? Does he really believe that the extreme right opposition will not “purge the Chavista state” at any cost? Has he forgotten the events of the 2002 attempted coup or the guarimbas of 2014-2017?

In conclusion, Mr. Velasco’s plea for a “democratic alternative to Chavismo” is not an affirmation of the ideals of the Bolivarian Revolution, but a capitulation to the US and its sponsored opposition in Venezuela.

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