The United States and the left-wing regional powers (Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, with close support from Chile) They wonder what to do with Nicolás Maduro Moroswho seems irritated these days. He has hardly slept. In his public appearances he has cast a look of impatience and displeasure at advisers who have been slow to act play to a video or that they couldn’t remember a name that was on the tip of his tongue. In the Miraflores Palace, you can’t hear his laughter in the corridors or the jokes he often makes to everyone from Cilia Flores, the first lady, to the guards and the cooks. According to a leader of the PSUV, the ruling party, as well as analysts and diplomats, he has never thought of any other scenario than a victory in last Sunday’s presidential election. The suspicion that his government apparatus cheated on Sunday to claim a victory that in fact belonged to opposition candidate Edmundo González has paralyzed an already turbulent country.
A significant part of the international community is asking itself this question What is the best way to resolve a political conflict? that concerns all of Latin America, because of the millions of Venezuelans who have dispersed across the continent as a result of the country's economic crisis. Washington has chosen this first week to corner Maduro and force him to make quick decisions, recognizing his rival as the winner. The neighboring countries with which Venezuela shares an ideological bond, on the other hand, are betting on a negotiation that allows a recount with the minutes that the Venezuelan electoral body has not yet produced, and offer a negotiated solution to Chavismo in case it is really defeated.
Ten days ago, Maduro could not have imagined such a scenario. The surveys that were brought to his office were positive. Those that circulated on networks that announced a serious defeat were false, fabricated by his enemies, they assured him. focus group and sociological analyses, which were at the forefront of anthropological studies, told him that he was the strong, Herculean, physically powerful candidate, compared to an older man, Edmundo González Urrutia, 74 years old, a reader, with gentle manners. Someone had the idea to introduce him to Venezuelans as a rooster with a long crest. In a cockpit, the Chavista leaders who were traveling around the country to campaign, repeated that they would punish Edmundo González with their barbs, which they described as a plucked chicken. Some illuminated drones drew a rooster in the sky of Caracas on the day his campaign ended.
Ronald Pena R (EFE)
Nothing went as planned. Chavismo was preparing for a resounding victory that would show the world that Maduro was not a usurper, but the legitimate president of a people who love him. The polls would tell. The National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Chavismo, declared Maduro the winner on Monday morning, after a delay of several hours in the counting. However, it only provided a total number of votes and not the data broken down by polling station, so there is no way to confirm its veracity. Within a few hours, suspicion spread about the entire process. The opposition, wanting to avoid the possibility of fraud, had asked all its witnesses to photograph these minutes and send them to Caracas, where they would be reviewed and tallied. According to these documents, which have been uploaded to the network for everyone to consult, González won by a very large margin.
The Maduro government, the opposition and the White House saw in these elections the opportunity to end a political crisis that has lasted almost ten years. The agreement between these parties, negotiated in Qatar, Barbados and Mexico, consisted of Chavismo allowing opposition candidates to run and committing to fair and transparent elections. The anti-Chavistas would admit defeat if all these scenarios that should help democratize the system currently controlled by Chavismo were to occur and materialize. And the United States would lift the more than 900 sanctions that it has imposed on Venezuela and the Chavista leaders. However, after July 28, the crisis is far from being resolved, but has plunged the country into a labyrinth.
The majority of the international community asks Maduro to show the minutes. Seven days later, the CNE has not done so, referring to the official period of thirty days it has to publish them – historically, they have come to light immediately. Maduro is not giving in for the time being. Washington assured that its patience was running out and announced Edmundo González as the winner on Thursday. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted on a transition period between presidents. This request was supported by a series of countries that successively declared the opponent the winner. In the face of facts, these countries are beginning to ignore Maduro as president and reject him as a valid interlocutor. The Venezuelan president says he is the victim of an international conspiracy, a “far-right” coup d’état involving the magnates Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. Even within Chavismo, some doubt whether he means it when he quotes them.
The left-wing leaders of Latin America are convinced that this is the wrong path, that it will lead nowhere. They are surprised and annoyed that Joe Biden has rushed in and announced a winner, while the minutes can still be presented. Gustavo Petro, from Colombia; Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, from Brazil, and Andrés Manuel López Obrador, from Mexico, are asking Chavismo to do it, the sooner the better. This would make it clear that they are the winners and thus stop the protests in the streets, which have so far resulted in more than a dozen deaths. Given the refusal to deliver, many believe that Chavismo is buying time to falsify the results for cities and municipalities that coincide with the final data. In any case, experts explain that these minutes are difficult to replicate and that the deception could be very clear.
In any case, what the presidents of the three left-wing regional powers want – the Chilean Gabriel Boric has been removed from the operation because he has maintained a very direct and public confrontation with Maduro – is to immediately open a negotiation based on two assumptions: that the disaggregated results are shown and that Edmundo González and the Venezuelan president are at the table to talk. As EL PAÍS revealed on Friday about those talks María Corina Machado must be excludedthe undisputed leader of the opposition, who, after a veto by the Chavismo-controlled institutions, appointed González to participate on her behalf. The ruling party thought that this coup would not work, but within days the opposition made him very popular and on Sunday he arrived in large numbers. The intention of the presidents to rule this out is delicate. None of the three feels admiration for her; in fact, they have often referred to their supposed radicalism to justify soft positions on Chavismo. Machado comes from the liberal right and at one point in his life tended towards extreme positions that he has now softened; they came from the Latin American left of the 1970s and 1980s, progressive in some areas and conservative in areas such as feminism.
But deep down, that is not the barrier. The presidents know very well that Machado monopolizes the anti-Chavista vote; in two years he has established himself as a reference that no one in the opposition disputes, not even those who do not like him very much. The problem is that Chavismo does not want to see her involved in negotiations. His name is hardly mentioned in Maduro's circle. Petro, Lula and López Obrador know that Chavismo will not enter into discussions with her, but only with Edmundo González. It does not seem so strange to them that this happens, since he was the candidate and the president in case a transparent recount would prove him right. This dialogue between the parties must assume that both will accept the result, as long as there is verifiable supervision by independent entities. The presidents plan to meet Maduro in the coming days and convince him to commit to these negotiations, a less hard path than that of the United States, which requires an immediate solution.
Critics of the presidents’ plan believe that Chavismo is once again trying to buy time and start a new dialogue that will last forever, just like the previous one. However, there are still few solutions in sight. Some defend a rerun of the election with extensive verification, others a more direct dialogue in which amnesty is offered to Maduro and his circle – no more than twenty people – on condition that they accept the results that seem to be coming out of the polls. Any dialogue will not be easy. Maduro has survived sanctions, international isolation, the parallel Venezuelan government abroad that the United States has devised, and an economic crisis that has forced a quarter of Venezuelans to leave. He currently enjoys the loyalty of the police and the army. He and those around him are experts in resistance, real marathon runners of attrition. Almost all of them, since the time of Hugo Chávez, have raised their arms and denounced conspiracies, attempts at destabilization and external accusations of fascism. So 25 years. A quarter century of Bolivarian revolution. And from what they say in public, they see themselves as strong for another 25. The international community wants to stop this internal conflict and is looking for a solution, a way out, in different ways. The art of diplomacy at its best.
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