Maduro Makes A Mockery Of Democracy — And Latin America’s Left Goes Along For The Ride

-Analysis-

BUENOS AIRES — The brutality of Venezuela’s socialist regime is usually a measure of its weakness. Seemingly as its prospects worsen, it has returned, instinctively, to the tried-and-tested formula of ruling by force.

It is how the so-called Bolivarian revolution has run Venezuela for 25 years. And its claims of being revolutionary and ruling for the people are merely to allow it the type of rights violations immediately pounced on should they occur in any right-wing regime. Like this last one: without a peep from anyone in Latin America, Venezuela’s commissar-filled Supreme Court banned the government’s chief opponents, notably the leading presidential aspirant María Corina Machado, from running for public office.

This was a crass reversal of the regime’s earlier bid to ingratiate itself with the United States and give the economy a breather. A conditional agreement in October (to allow opponents to compete in elections) broadly alleviated U.S. sanctions, allowing business to pick up a little, before this return to the “Nicaraguan” path of brazen despotism. Here President Nicolás Maduro chose to heed the counsels of hardliners led by the deputy-head of the ruling party and captain in the Armed Forces, Diosdado Cabello.

The volte-face has been justified with the usual litany of claims on attempted coups and CIA plots to murder Maduro. It’s the side dish in a familiar recipe.

The reason was the regime’s sullen realism. It is the first time that elections could sweep away — or bring crashing down — the socialist edifice its ideologue, the late Hugo Chávez, began raising in 1999. The regime was already showing restlessness when it revived months ago a 19th century dispute over Esequibo, an oil-rich chunk of land inside neighboring Guyana. Threatening to march into the territory was a jingoistic ploy any troubled regime would try, especially as Venezuelans already believe Esequibo is ‘rightly’ part of their country.

The Falklands and Kuwait

Esequibo is a little like our drama with the Falkland Islands, which we call Malvinas, although Guyana became independent of Great Britain in 1966 and the land dispute is now with the International Court at The Hague. Perhaps it is more like Kuwait, the oil-drenched emirate Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein briefly annexed in 1990. He was hoping, in vain, to solve Iraq’s dismal economic conditions in one fell swoop. Likewise Maduro may envisage he could bankroll a Bolivarian renaissance with Esequibo’s resources. Thanks to those, Guyana’s economy grew 57.8% in 2022, and 29.2% in 2023. Thus he held a referendum on Dec. 3 wherein voters were asked to reaffirm this claim, though its chief result turned out to be their abstention.

In economic terms, moving closer to the United States made sense both for the regime and the United States.

Less than 10% of almost 21 million eligible voters voted that day, which is fewer than the disciplined opposition supporters who voted last June to make Machado the opposition’s single candidate at the presidential elections due this year. The regime previously received a slap in the face in the 2022 local elections in the state of Barinas, Chávez’s birth state, where the opposition won. Rather, two slaps: the Supreme Court annulled the results, ordered a repeat with other opposition candidates, and the opposition won again!

In economic terms, moving closer to the United States made sense both for the regime and the United States. The country’s GDP had halved in the last decade, oil production had fallen to less than 700,000 barrels a day, which could barely meet local demand, and a scarcity of dollar earnings meant an end to the dual-rate forex market which regime hands had turned into their cash cow. Those with access to subsidized dollars made tidy sums for a while reselling them at market rates, but all this was grinding to a halt as the world slipped into crisis with the invasion of Ukraine. Falling production blocked another furtive market, namely smuggling fuel and derivatives to Brazil and Colombia. So for the regime, there was a cash imperative behind the deal and a softening of policies.

The first steps were to dollarize prices and open up the economy to private firms, following internal negotiations between Delcy Rodríguez, a vice-president and protégée of the first lady, and her rival Cabello. That helped consumer supplies recover and slowed inflation, though at the cost of ideological tensions over fears of a ‘liberalization’ drive. The reformist gang had a boost with the six-month pact signed with the United States that conditionally suspended sanctions imposed after Maduro’s disputed reelection in May 2018. Caracas was suddenly full of foreign oil executives, and even prisoners were released including eight U.S. citizens who could return home.

State Secrets?

Washington in turn released two prisoners: a Maduro confidante and ‘attorney,’ Alex Saab Morán, and another Colombian, Álvaro Enrique Pulido Vargas, a former business partner of Maduro’s. The business in question included a Mexico-based firm entrusted by the Venezuelan state to import food to be sold at subsidized prices to the poor. It was sold of course, but not to the poor nor at subsidized prices.

As the president prepares to run for office again, his supporters insist it wasn’t him but the judiciary that barred his opponents.

Pulido Vargas and Saab were jailed in the United States following convictions relating to drug trafficking and money laundering, respectively. Perhaps it wasn’t the economy after all: did Maduro just want them back in Venezuela, with everything they knew?

The regime is back to its old shenanigans in any case, claiming a coup is afoot, demoting 30 army officers and linking opponents with the alleged coup. Meanwhile, as the president prepares to run for office again, his supporters insist it wasn’t him but the judiciary that barred his opponents.

The regime has until April — six months from October 2023 — to backtrack on its punitive measures, though this looks unlikely. Machado has meanwhile refused to recognize the ban and will keep campaigning, to keep herself in public view. This may or may not work. Another brave woman did the same against Nicaragua’s perennial ruler, Daniel Ortega. There Cristiana Chamorro was also the runaway favorite to win the elections in November 2021, until the police burst in and ransacked her house with “a court order.” Two years later, she was expelled to the United States alongside a hundred opponents who have been stripped of their citizenship.

We may see the same in Venezuela if the region — and especially Brazil, rather than the United States — persist in the belief that, really, things aren’t so bad in Venezuela!