Opposition supporters demonstrating in Buenos Aires one of them holding a banner that reads “SOS, Intervention now, SouthCom.” Photo: AP.
By Francisco Domínguez – Aug 8, 2024
“No Venezuelan party that alleges to have 40 percent more votes than President Maduro (as the opposition claims) would hesitate to present the evidence to the National Electoral Council (CNE)…Whoever cries election fraud, must irrefutably prove it, the onus is on them not on the CNE to prove there wasn’t.”
Dr Olga Alvarez, Venezuelan constitutionalist expert.
Despite a monstrous internationally-coordinated, and grotesquely false media campaign of fake news that repeatedly quoted CIA-linked “pollsters” giving extreme right-wing candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, percentages of up to 80 percent of the vote and all supplemented by a propaganda campaign threatening violence, voiced principally by media-lionised, far-right politician, Maria Corina Machado, on July 28, 2024, the people of Venezuela calmly but solidly voted to continue the Bolivarian process by re-electing Nicolas Maduro for the 2025-2031 period.
President Maduro’s victory as in the first CNE bulletin with 80% of the ‘voting records’ (tally sheets) in was 51.2 percent, against Gonzalez 44.2 percent, then confirmed by the CNE second Bulletin with 97 percent of the voting records, Maduro with 52 percent (6,408,844 votes) and Gonzalez with 43 percent (5,326,104 votes.).
The unprecedented level of fake messaging coordination by the world corporate media, even when the target is Venezuela, was surprising. It was exceedingly well-coordinated with an astounding degree of content homogeneity that for months bombarded Venezuelans 24/7 with disinformation. Bombardment which grew in intensity in the few days before the election.
There is only one centre of power in the world with the muscle to command the world corporate media to carry out such an insidious campaign. This involved thousands of newspapers and TV channels going from the most reputable to the most loathsome. The media lies were incessantly repeated with a twist of hatred by tens of thousands of web networks spewing millions of messages daily by bot farms. Opposition leaders, as they have done many times in the past, unashamedly legitimised the campaign of hatred.
Firstly, there was the false media charge that elections in Venezuela are neither free nor fair, allegations with no evidence to back it up. The media just echo the opposition’s claims of ‘fraud’ when they lose, but accept the results when they win. Venezuela’s electoral system has been electronic since 2004, and has been substantially improved over the years with biometric authentication since 2012, yet the opposition has cried fraud in 2004, 2017, 2018, 2023 and now in 2024, but not in 2015 when the opposition got nearly two thirds majority in the National Assembly (which President Maduro recognised immediately).
To top it all up, every election has at least 16 audits at which all political contenders participate and, unless one audit is approved, the next one cannot be undertaken. Venezuela’s election system is fully auditable, verifiable, reliable and fraud-proof, the vote is secret. To this day, the opposition has totally failed to produce irrefutable evidence of their patently false allegations. The only time they promised evidence of ‘fraud’ was for the August 2004 recall referendum (at which Maria Corina Machado-led, US-funded ‘NGO’, Súmate, played a central role) was when opposition politician, Henry Ramos Allup, immediately after the referendum result was announced (won by President Chávez by 59 percent), promised to produce the evidence ‘within 24 hours.’ We are still waiting.
Secondly, the world corporate media completely distorted one of President Maduro’s phrases that if he lost the election there would be ‘a bloodbath’. What he meant was that the government programme of the extreme right was so brutal (wholesale privatisation of just about everything under the Venezuelan sun, including oil, gas, education, health, elimination of all social benefits and so forth) that would inevitably bring about a social reaction similar to the one against Milei in Argentina, thus leading a possible right-wing government in Venezuela to resort to force and repression, hence the President’s use of the term “bloodbath”. Not one carried out by President Maduro to stay in power. The world corporate media hacks knew this fully well (there were over 1300 journalists accredited in Venezuela for the election), yet they lied all the same.
Thirdly, though it is difficult to gauge its impact, the psychological media propaganda that may have had a negative influence among voters was the campaign of fear that if Nicolas Maduro was re-elected the exodus of Venezuelans would be much greater than the millions who left the country asphyxiated by the torrent of US sanctions. The world corporate media even quoted “polls” that “showed that 40% of Venezuelans would consider leaving the South American nation if ruler Nicolas Maduro is declared the winner of July’s presidential election.” This was sheer terror propaganda.
Actually 40 percent of Venezuela’s population is 12 million. This makes no sense since, though there are still serious deficiencies as a result of the raft of brutal US sanctions, the economy has recovered and it is expected to grow by 5 to 8 percent this year, hyperinflation has been brought under control to single digits with 1 percent in June, Venezuela is now 96 percent self-sufficient on food, more than 5 million houses for the poor have been delivered, and about 1 million Venezuelans have returned home through the government programme Vuelta a la Patria (Return to the Homeland).
Fourthly, the world corporate media campaign was spiced up with the usual mendacious depiction of Venezuela as a dictatorship where there is no freedom of the press. A far cry from reality. Anybody can access any Venezuelan opposition newspaper, TV channel, radio station, even social networks and can confirm this is not true and see the political diversity of the media by themselves.
As it was to be expected, the extreme right-wing candidate, Edmundo González, did not recognise the CNE results and claimed fraud. And as it was feared, his not acceptance of the results led to a wave of wanton violence in several of the main cities in the country. International observers saw the violence first hand since many of the rioters focused on institutions related to the election, especially the CNE and many observers have left vivid videos of their experience.
Venezuela’s General Attorney, William Tarek Saab, went on national television to inform the nation that under the cover of going around the country to do electoral campaigning, Maria Corina Machado and her team were paying off bands of criminals, most with criminal records, who she organised in gangs in key cities, who were paid between US$40 to US$150 dollars per day of “activity” and who were unleashed in the evening of July 28 and more intensely on July 29. Blood tests carried on those arrested showed the presence of drugs, specifically Captagon, “a stimulant used by mercenaries and terrorists throughout the world to maintain focus.” The right-wing opposition has done exactly the same with previous guarimba ‘activities’ both in 2014 and 2017.
These thugs were unleashed, they looted, burned stores, attacked by-standers, dragged many social leaders out of their houses and brutally beat them up, and went for everything that smacked of Chavismo (public buildings, public vehicles, schools, clinics, and so forth. A preliminary balance of their wanton violence has produced the following (in serious or total damage):
12 universities, 7 kindergarten schools, 21 primary schools, 34 secondary schools, 6 centres of comprehensive medical diagnoses, 1 high-tech centre of medicine, 30 outpatient medical centres, 1 chemist, 6 centres of CLAP food storage and supermarkets, 1 communal radio station, 11 metro stations in Caracas, 1 train burned in the city of Valencia, 38 public transport buses, 27 monuments and statues of Bolivar, Chavez and other national figures, 10 PSUV HQ, some with people inside, 1 sewerage treatment station, 10 military barracks, the Chacao HQ of the Housing Mission attacked with Molotov cocktails with people and children inside, 10 regional HQ of the CNE in as many states, they attempted to burn down the central CNE HQ but were prevented form doing so, they fired two rounds with the intention of assaulting the presidential palace, CNE president managed to take to safety 60 international observers who received their ‘baptism of fire’ from bullets fired by the thugs, they burned down the town halls of Carirubana and Quibor, they destroyed the El Valle public square and the metro station there, they attacked the Maracay zoo, over 5000 social leaders reported digital threats against them, by-standers were killed and they burned their vehicles, 2 armed forces officers were killed, 1 brigadier general 1 lieutenant coronel, 1 first lieutenant, 21 soldiers were injured, and 120 police officers were also injured, and much more The cyberattacks continue.
The response of the government and its supporters has been to hold gigantic demonstrations on several occasions since July 28. Thus, not only the extreme right-wing were defeated electorally, their violent subversive assault, despite the serious damage and destruction it caused, also failed. Their demand that 100 percent of the tally sheets (‘voting records’) be submitted by the government, profusely parroted by the world corporate media, is phony (and they know it). Machado and Gonzalez have made several confusing claims, that they have 40 percent of the voting records, then 70 percent and also 100 percent. President Maduro has gone to the Supreme Court filing a review appeal which involves the government submitting all the ‘voting records’ in the possession of his coalition, asking the Supreme Court to summon all 10 candidates for them to submit their voting records.
Thus, Edmundo Gonzalez’s ‘voting records’ can only be shown to be consistent with the information gathered by the CNE after people voted, in which case, the CNE results will be confirmed. This is clearly a powerful reason for Machado and Gonzales not submitting (whatever percentage) of their voting records. Machado is even making out she is in clandestinity. It is also a powerful reason for Machado (with US support and advice) to post evidently false voting records in a Unitary Platform far-right party coalition website. Yet, Machado appeared in a demonstration on August 3, making a speech and calling for external intervention, so, if Gonzalez’s victory is so overwhelming, why not submit their voting records? They have refused to submit their voting records to Venezuela’s maximum tribunal.
The US, realising the significance of Maduro’s Supreme Court action, that 9 candidates will respect, except Gonzalez, moved immediately to kill the President initiative by US State Secretary, Antony Blinken, unilaterally, without any evidence whatever, recognising Edmundo Gonzalez as the winner of the 2024 presidential election. In a nutshell, the US was the mastermind all along. The Venezuelan authorities have calmly but firmly responded that the president of Venezuela is chosen by the people of Venezuela not by the US State Dept. However, a few days later, the US backtracked, a Whitehouse spokesperson that the US is not taking such a ‘step today.’
To add to the US multidimensional aggression against Venezuela, mercenary Erik Prince wrote on the social network X: “If Kamala Harris and Joe Biden really want to support freedom and legitimate elections in Venezuela, then they should raise the rewards to US$100 million each on these already wanted criminals, Nicolas Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, and all the others in their cartel.” President Maduro has already been slapped with a bounty reward of US$15 million “for information leading to [his] arrest or conviction.”
Venezuela has been subjected to a new type of coup d’etat which involved a monstrous corporate media campaign, an intoxicating social network campaign of hatred, a wave of terrorist attacks aimed at causing chaos and targeting the country’s electric system, a gigantic and sustained cybernetic attack of the informatic installations of the CNE, all aimed not at delaying the results, but at preventing there was any result issued by the CNE, to be followed by a nasty wave of wanton violence, all coherent components of the coup d’etat. If it could be done to Venezuela, it could be done to anybody. The United States wants the oil, the lithium and the rare earths that Latin America is rich on.
The CNE and the authorities managed to defend the CNE installations and, despite the massive cybernetic attack, it managed to issue the election results. The authorities of Venezuela ought to be congratulated for having held election 32 despite the difficult circumstances created by external aggression, gross media interference and a disloyal, violent, US-led opposition. The people re-elected Nicolas Maduro, that is, they voted for peace, more social progress and democracy.
The non recognition is an obstacle to the decision of the people who voted for peace and stability. Thus we must remain vigilant and redouble our solidarity efforts to continue defending Venezuela’s national sovereignty, its right to self-determination, the immediate and unconditional lifting of all the sanctions (including the return of the gold illegally retained by the Bank of England), and continue opposing external aggression. Venezuela has the right to live in peace.
FD/OT
OT SPECIAL
Francisco Dominguez
Francisco Dominguez, a former refugee from Chile in the UK, is Head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University, London, United Kingdom.
