Caracas Chronicles

We’ve argued in the past that chavismo rarely backs down on the narratives it establishes. If they lie, it’s likely they will take that lie to the grave. Sometimes, this trait corners them into extreme situations because more often than not those narratives are nonsensical. Eventually they prevail because when they feel cornered they simply plough through, demolishing whatever they find in their way.

It’s been two weeks since Nicolás Maduro claimed to have won the presidential elections. Two weeks, and his electoral authority (CNE) hasn’t presented one shred of evidence to back it up. Meanwhile, Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia published the voting tallies gathered by the opposition on a website. Anybody can go online and corroborate the results. So far, Machado said they have over 83.5% of the tallies. The results show a difference in favor of González Urrutia of over 3 million votes with Maduro losing in every single state.

It’s an astonishing win for the opposition. But still those numbers have to be put into context. And for that, we have to go back to stuff we discussed before the election. 

Massive

There were 21.4 million citizens registered to vote in the presidential election inside Venezuela, and just under 70,000 were registered to vote abroad. The Maduro administration made it really hard for anyone abroad to register. This is how we put it back then in our Political Risk Report:

“Let’s start with migrants. According to UN figures, there are 7.7 million Venezuelans living abroad. Most have emigrated in the past decade, as in 2015 that figure was less than a million. We don’t know how many of those migrants are of voting age, nor how many were registered to vote, but estimates from different sources put that figure at around 4.2 million voters, or around 20% of the electorate that is unable to vote. So right from the start, if those estimates are correct, the electorate has already been reduced from 21.4 million to around 17.1 million.”

Not very likely that there were many Maduro fans in that group. And even with the classic apathetic folks who don’t register to vote or that are too overwhelmed with trying to adapt to a new country, this is a massive voter suppression effort right off the bat.

Then there were those inside Venezuela who were registered to vote, but live in a different state from their voting centers; estimates put that number at around one million. The possible electorate is therefore reduced further to 16.1 million, and if you remove the people who for whatever reason don’t vote, our estimate of a high turnout was 13 million. Which was the actual turnout of the elections.

According to the current numbers in the opposition website, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia takes the win with 67% according to 83.5% of the tallies processed by the opposition (10,660,267 votes counted). Again we can safely say that around 13 million people voted.

So, Edmundo’s 67%, which can already be considered a landslide win, is a 67% that survived massive voter suppression, use of public funds for campaigning purposes, and a fear mongering campaign that has been going on for a couple of decades.

So this is 7,303,480 for González Urrutia (likely to get to 8.7 million) and 3,316,142 for Maduro (likely to get to 4.3 million). But still, and this is of course something that can’t be put into numbers, from that 4.3 million that Maduro will get, a huge chunk voted for him because of fear or intimidation. Consider that Venezuela has around 2 million public employees (and this is a conservative estimate, if you add the military world it could go well over 4 million), most of which are forced to attend campaign events and participate in the political agenda. For the large group of workers that are not actually ideologized, it represents a risk not to vote for Maduro. In some cases this fear is justified and in others it’s paranoia that has been instilled in them via government propaganda. And then there are the local chavista structures like the Consejos Comunales and the Colectivos (urban armed groups) that menace voters with removing the meager aids that the government gives away or simply with breaking their legs if they don’t vote for Maduro. This makes that 4.3 million votes a really weak 4.3 million.

So, Edmundo’s 67%, which can already be considered a landslide win, is a 67% that survived massive voter suppression, use of public funds for campaigning purposes, and a fear mongering campaign that has been going on for a couple of decades.

And in the aftermath, not only did Maduro have to do all those efforts for Edmundo to reduce his voting pool to a likely 8.7 million, but he had to actually tamper with the results, reverting 3 million votes to get a weak 51% win.

In broad daylight

In their first Bulletin, the Maduro CNE authorities said that they had 80% of the votes processed, but the Carter Center just said that by then 92% had been processed. Maduro and his crew didn’t even care to attempt a credible lie, they just threw random numbers on the board. 

Instead of presenting the voting tallies, the validation of the process was handed over to the Maduro-Flores controlled Supreme Tribunal. The high court is gathering information from all relevant parties and will spend 15 court days (or maybe less) examining it. This examination happens while a group of countries including Brazil, Colombia and Mexico on one side and the United States on the other, has been pushing for the evidence that backs the government’s claim—a strategy apparently led by Brazil’s Lula da Silva. The answer of the court: you’ll have to wait. A classic chavista strategy, dragging things until their counterparts rot waiting. 

Rumors abound regarding the possible negotiations: that the Supreme Tribunal will say that digital fascists corrupted the election results and that the elections must be repeated, a Barinas scenario; that there is some sort of shared government agreement on the table; that what the table actually has is protections for Maduro; and that everyone feels comfortable tabling the discussion until January, when the oath of office is due.

We would lean into thinking that Chavismo will simply work on wearing out international stakeholders, and insist that they will not give in an inch—maybe even holding an early oath of office. The Brazil/Colombia/Mexico bloc kind of called Maduro on his strategy with a joint statement in which they said “great that the TSJ is involved, but the voting information table by table should be released by your elections authority.” But it doesn’t seem like there’s too much communication with the Maduro regime. They are supposed to hold a call next week. Meanwhile, the U.S. stands back, gradually increasing the loudness of its tone, but holding until something comes out of the Lula led strategy.

While Lula and Petro could be considered Maduro allies, I have no doubt that either of them would give anything to have to deal with González Urrutia or even Maria Corina Machado(!) instead of Maduro. They know everybody is watching, and they know that Maduro will not be able to produce evidence of him winning the elections, whatever he comes upon with will be unverifiable.

Maduro’s bet is that Lula will get bored and look for another project for his Nobel peace prize, and that Petro will have no other option but to swallow the huge wave of migrants coming his way. All out of extenuation and left wing solidarity, Maduro would expect them to keep things cordial. On the domestic side he expects that the latest round of extreme human rights violations will deter any further violent protests and that the police state will be able to control his opponents. 

These are the same strategies he’s used before.

If the region lets this one slide, it will feel it immediately. The continent is still trying to adapt to Venezuelan migrants, imagine what will happen with 2 or 3 million more.

In the past, we’ve encountered all sorts of situations in which chavismo has bulldozed the will of the people, and each situation has been different to the other. In 2007, Chávez lost a referendum in which voters said they didn’t want indefinite reelection, the next year the government imposed it anyway. In 2015, the opposition took over the legislature after a historic vote against chavismo. The next year, chavismo said: hell no and never again. They blocked the parliament from doing any work, they set up a parallel institution, and they decided never to lose an election again. This translated into illegally summoned presidential elections, electoral events that were clearly tampered with, and a series of political disqualifications for opposition candidates.

This time around, there are two key variables that chavismo has to deal with: the opposition’s evidence of the win, and the landslide. The evidence is what has been keeping in check the international community. It is no secret that many international stakeholders would have been happy with a “moderate Maduro” and would have been willing to bend if the result were at least a bit unclear. Having the evidence allows the opposition (or even you!) to pressure those governments as well, to keep them from turning a blind eye. What we call having los pelos del burro en la mano.

If the region lets this one slide, it will feel it immediately. The continent is still trying to adapt to Venezuelan migrants, imagine what will happen with 2 or 3 million more. Not only this, but the message to the international community is quite clear: in Latin America you can get away with stealing an election and there’s nothing anyone can do.

But perhaps the most important variable is the magnitude of the landslide. This is a key instrument for the Machado/González camp. Apart from communicating chavismo’s fraud, the opposition has to make sure that the people understand the scale and the meaning of the win. 

They have to insist on the scale, because it goes beyond 67% of the people that were able to vote. It also includes the millions of Venezuelans that were left out, and the hundreds of thousands that are afraid of chavismo and are forced to wear a red shirt. 

More importantly, they have to help Venezuelans understand the meaning. This win means that chavismo failed in embedding itself in the Venezuelan psyche, and it should give an assurance to anyone on the ground that a sheer majority of the people took the same decision, so no matter how many snitches and spies the government can buy: people can start trusting their neighbors again. They should know they are not alone. Because we are not.

Maduro just robbed a whole country, and everybody knows it.