Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. File photo.
By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein – Aug 3, 2024
The presidential election has concluded. They were long days of extreme tension in which the Venezuelan people were subjected to strong psychological pressure campaigns accompanied by enormous financial and media support for the opposition that included an action of digital terrorism against the National Electoral Council (CNE), preventing it from publishing the final results within the stipulated period and generating nervousness in the citizens who were waiting for them.
Today, despite what the transnational media transmits of information that shows a country on fire with a president on the run and a fractured armed force, the country is experiencing a widespread calm. The desperation of the international right and the average scoundrel is manifested in the fact that they must resort to false and decontextualized images that occurred at other times and even in other countries. People one could consider decent and who have held high positions in their countries, have resorted to lying in an impudent and shameless way to show a false and fabricated truth.
Votes of Chavismo decrease – urgent problems Maduro faces
On the same Sunday night, already in the early hours of Monday, President Maduro called for building a broad political alliance that would allow for widening the social base of support for Chavismo. Likewise, he urged the country’s businessmen and women to articulate an alliance between the public and private sectors, to move towards a “revolutionary, socialist and nationalist ethic” management model.
It cannot be otherwise when the continuity in the decrease in the historical vote of Chavismo has been verified in the three elections that Maduro has won (2013, 2018 and 2024). I believe that the people have given the president a new opportunity, but this could be the last if basic problems that afflict the population, especially in the humblest sectors, are not resolved. In his new term, the president will have to combat administrative inefficiency and corruption and solve three problems that maintain a climate of annoyance among citizens: low salaries, lack of public services (electricity, water, gas, telephones and health among the most problematic) in some regions of the country and the insufficiencies in the supply of fuel for the population.
Opposition has rejected to recognize 28 out of a total of 30 elections in the last 25 years
But he has gained six years to continue carrying out the economic and social transformation project initiated by Commander Hugo Chávez. It was known in advance that the opposition would not recognize the results. This has always been the case in the previous 28 elections won by Chavismo out of the 30 held in the last 25 years. This is part of a strategy by the United States and Europe to declare the elections illegal and on that basis, maintain the sanctions and continue financing the opposition, based on the understanding that the true “government” is one of the opposition.
This plan included that, hours before the CNE gave the result, an interventionist operation led by right-wing governments and former presidents of Argentina, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Peru and Uruguay, say of the regional ultra-right, was verified. Important governments in the region such as Mexico, Brazil, Cuba, Honduras, and Colombia did not participate in this operation, nor did Bolivia, Nicaragua or the nations of the English-speaking Caribbean. So, the declaration of around 10 countries led by the United States was amplified by the international average, putting the majority of the countries in the region in the background. And that same media, acting unilaterally, has bombarded the information spectrum for three days, even managing to confuse friendly countries and personalities.
On the night of the elections, in the midst of the wait caused by the interruption of the electronic data transmission process, grassroots leaders of Chavismo stated that they were going to defend the process by all means, increasing the levels of tension every time it was presumed that if the violence to which a sector of the opposition had been called by some of its leaders broke out, Chavismo was going to respond, producing a situation with unforeseeable consequences. But the Chavista leaders clarified that they would defend the vote, and if necessary, they were also going to take to the streets to fight.
It was very symptomatic that an important Chavista social leader said that it was not about continuing to blindly support the government, but that they were defending the strategic mission of expanding communal power and that they defended the government they had assumed because it allowed them to continue accumulating forces to promote the community.
Support for Maduro due to political and ideological reasons
In Maduro’s next presidential term there will be no substantial changes in foreign policy. Changes will be mainly regarding domestic policy. Maduro will be forced to respond to the popular sectors that gave him their support despite the difficult situation in the country. In the situation created, it is noted that the vote of support for Maduro had a high political and ideological content in a sector that was upset and that was recovered by the extraordinary and brilliant electoral campaign of Chavismo that, without being good in communication terms, succeeded in organizational and mobilization levels.
In his desire to gain governability and stability, Maduro was forced to make concessions to the right and the business sector. With lucid management, he managed to stabilize the macroeconomic figures that favored the middle and upper sectors of the population and to a lesser extent the popular sectors. In the campaign, Maduro was able to capture the existence of unrest among the humblest citizens who, despite this, gave him their vote.
Essence of future success
But now, Maduro will have to respond to that popular support without breaking with the commitments he made with certain sectors of the opposition and with businessmen. The search for that balance will be the essence of his future success.
On the other hand, a determining factor will be the attitude that the United States assumes with respect to Venezuela. There are three fundamental issues: immigration, energy and relations with China and Russia. The first two are campaign issues in the United States. It is very likely that rapprochements will occur because Venezuela today is a major issuer of undocumented migrants. On the second issue, the crisis in West Asia and the sanctions against Russia have deteriorated the world energy market and it may be in the interest of the United States to expand its demand in Venezuela for which it will necessarily have to negotiate with Maduro. We must remember that the immigration issue is the most important issue in the electoral debate in the United States.
The last aspect, that of relations with China and Russia, will remain unchanged with respect to Venezuela, which aspires to join the BRICS and increase its ties with China and Russia and with the countries of that conglomerate to gather support for the solution of the problems presented by US and European sanctions. But, in any case, this will depend more on China and Russia than on Venezuela. The country, for its part, could make important contributions to this group of countries that will undoubtedly grow in future times.
The preconceived plan sets in motion
After the electoral event last Sunday passed with total calm and citizen tranquility, as expected, after the official results were given, the opposition did not recognize them and with this, a preconceived plan of national and international actions against the country was unleashed.
This plan began to be developed in the days before the elections when the global ultra-right attempted to enter the country by force without having been invited by the electoral body. It was a clear provocation. On Sunday afternoon, when even though there were still people voting, Argentine Foreign Minister Diana Mondino announced that González had won with a 37% difference. In parallel, seven Latin American countries (including Argentina) issued a statement saying that there had been fraud and announcing that they would not recognize Nicolás Maduro. Along with this, a strong offensive was unleashed on social networks in which former presidents and leaders of the Latin American ultra-right participated calling for the non-recognition of the results.
All of this created the conditions for acts of violence to develop on Monday the 29th, the modus operandi of which showed clear synchronization and planning. Today there is information that some thousands of people throughout the country participated in these marches and acts of violence. Almost 1000 terrorists were arrested for these incidents and – as is usual for paid people who have no ethics or political incentives – they have started to speak. It has become known that 80% have a criminal record and a good part have recently returned from abroad where they received military training. Likewise, 90% were in an advanced state of drug addiction and carried weapons illegally. They also claimed to have received $150 a day to cause chaos. At this time, 7 pm on Wednesday the 31st, the situation in the city is calm while the streets are slowly returning to normal.
Yesterday morning, the armed force represented by its entire leadership, absolutely all of its high command, expressed total support for the government and loyalty to President Maduro while forcefully rejecting the violent actions that would be promptly repressed as they go against the Constitution and the institutionality, generating anxiety and attacking the peace so desired and long sought by Venezuelans.
Likewise, as the day went by, the characteristics of the cyberattack that the National Electoral Council suffered on Sunday became known, preventing timely information about the results. This action pursued -precisely- the objective of serving as a trigger to begin an escalation of violence that was intended to incorporate sectors of the armed force and provoke a change of government by force.
Cyber-attack on electoral system
The cyber-attack was massive and multiple. Venezuela had never before suffered an onslaught of these dimensions that has not yet ceased. Currently, hundreds of attacks continue to occur against the website of the National Electoral Council, making the transmission of data impossible.
There was also an attempt to make an electrical blackout that would lead to chaos so that there would be no electoral results, thus allowing the violence to be justified. All of this forced the government to activate the Council of State to hold a joint meeting with the National Security Council to evaluate the situation that occurred and make decisions.
According to Víctor Theoktisto , PHD in computing and external auditor of the National Electoral Council (CNE) for the supervision and study of the Election System in the part of system software, digital security, cryptography and secure data transmission between June and July 2021 , the attack was a DOS ( Denial of Service ) carried out from the Republic of North Macedonia that consists of saturating networks with a huge amount of spurious traffic to prevent information from being transmitted.
In an interview for the Russian portal Sputnik, the technician reported that: “Although it is impossible to alter the content of what was transmitted, it was possible to reduce the connections. In such a way that they were rarely completed successfully, slowing down the entire process of totalization. It was a situation foreseen by the intelligence agencies with the help of the operators and was eventually resolved but causing a notable delay. The attack also consisted [and continues] of a permanent attack on the CNE site, on the State media, and in general to the services of the public administration , as a global and multifactorial attack on the Venezuelan State.”
The international disinformation campaign regarding what happened in the Venezuelan elections, which has been characterized by a high level of organization, aimed at generating uncertainty and questioning the Venezuelan electoral institution, based on the unusual argument that María Machado owns 100% of the minutes in their possession, which is elementary and undeniable because all the political parties and representatives of the candidates in each polling station have them. Chavismo too. It’s about showing the evidence, not about who makes the most noise.
As explained by Theoktisto, when the tables are closed and the votes are totaled, they (in the form of tally sheets) are transmitted through an automated and encrypted mechanism throughout their journey by “technological devices that are impossible to alter, manipulate or eliminate” until reaching the National Totalization Center of the National Electoral Council.
The computer expert comments that the machine then generates the same scrutiny report printed on paper like those at points of sale where the table data, day, time and various security codes are indicated (to prevent them from being supplanted by false copies and that are unique for each table), in addition, the votes for each candidate, by political organization, total votes [and] null votes…
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He adds that this information is delivered “to all witnesses of the political parties , duly accredited.” Likewise, 50% of the tables are audited at random in order to ratify the conformity between the voting results that appear in the printed Voting Record and the voting receipts deposited in the corresponding receipt box.
The expert concludes by saying that “all the political organizations that accredited their witnesses currently have, printed, all the tally sheets in each and every one of the more than 30,000 polling stations.”
Maduro reacts
Totalization allows victory to be awarded and the candidate with the majority of votes declared. That totalization must be done within 48-72 hours after the event. The CNE has 30 days to publish the results in the Electoral Gazette. But in this case the electoral body has denounced the hacking that it was subjected to to try to prevent and slow down the totalization of data. That is to say, candidates have 15 days by law to challenge the results before the competent body.
In order to eliminate any doubt about the transparency of the electoral process that certified the victory of Nicolás Maduro, he filed an appeal for protection before the electoral chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) today, Wednesday the 31st. The procedure was carried out to request the Electoral Chamber of the TSJ “to dedicate itself to settling this attack against the electoral process and coup d’état using the elections and to clarify all these attacks…”
To this end, Maduro asked the TSJ to summon all the candidates, the representatives of all the parties and compare all the elements of evidence and certify, by conducting a technical expert opinion, the results of July 28, for which he informed the highest court of the State, that his alliance, the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) and his organization, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) will present to the public opinion 100% of the minutes that endorse his electoral victory, making it known that both Political structures are willing to show all the minutes, urging the other candidates to follow the same procedure in order to clear up doubts about the transparency of the elections and the veracity of the results. In this sense and in order to settle any doubts in this regard, Maduro stated that he as political leader will submit to interrogation by the electoral chamber of the country’s highest court.
That same Wednesday afternoon, with the evidence in hand, President Maduro appeared before the foreign press to announce all the information collected with which the new file of the terrorist plan against Venezuela can easily be configured, this time from of the declaration of a fraud that was born and developed in the psychological warfare laboratories of the United States and that, with the financing of the global ultra-right, Colombian drug trafficking and the US intelligence agencies, attempted to chaotize Venezuela to make it easy prey for his imperial voracity.
Sergio Rodriguez-Gelfenstein
Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, a Venezuelan international relations expert, Gelfenstein was previously Director of the International Relations of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his country’s ambassador to Nicaragua and an advisor for international politics for TELESUR. He has written numerous books, among them “China in the XXI Century – the awakening of a giant,” published in several Latin American countries.
