On 28 July a presidential election took place in Venezuela. Expected to be one of the closest presidential races in years, soon after midnight, the National Electoral Council (CNE) declared that, with 80 percent of the vote counted, incumbent leftist president Nicolás Maduro won by 5,150,092 votes (51.20 percent) to the 4,445,978 votes (44.2 percent) obtained by ultra-right candidate Edmundo González. With a voter turnout of 59.97 percent, González stood in for far-right opposition figure María Corina Machado after she was banned by the Supreme Court earlier this year for supporting harsh U.S. economic sanctions against Venezuela.

Immediately after the CNE announcement on 29 July Machado claimed González won with 70 percent of the vote. ‘“Venezuela has a new president-elect and it is Edmundo González. We won and the whole world knows it,” said Machado in a joint statement with González.

With the CNE declaring that it suffered a massive cyber attack during the election, “the electoral body,” noted Venezuelan journalist Andreína Chávez Alava, “did not release the results broken down by [the] voting center on its website which remains out of service.” Chávez Alava added that “CNE authorities have denounced an ongoing cyber attack that has delayed the vote-tallying and publishing operations” while the “magnitude of the issue has not been fully clarified.”

By 1 August U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken declared that the the government of the United States: “congratulat[ed] Edmundo González Urrutia on his successful campaign,” adding that it was now “time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful, peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law.”

Despite this being the twentieth election since the late president Hugo Chávez won office in 1998 and commenced the Bolivarian revolution, much of the mainstream media has supported the opposition’s narrative. For those familiar with Venezuelan politics though, this is not the first time the opposition have cried foul play and been discredited.

Speaking to ZNet, Alan MacLeod, a journalist who covered the elections from Caracas for MintPress News, said the “international media have largely lionized González as a ‘grandfather-of-the-nation’ character (CNN) who can unite the people. While many mention that he retired from the diplomatic service in 2002, few note the reason for this: he was forced out in shame, after supporting a far-right coup against the government.” 

Asked about Machado, MacLeod said that: “few media outlets mention Machado’s participation in the 2002 coup against Huge Chávez, nor the fact that her career has been consistently bankrolled by the U.S. government. Her organization, Súmate, for example, was funded by the notorious National Endowment for Democracy.” “In 2018,” added MacLeod, Machado “wrote a letter to Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, beseeching him to head a foreign military intervention in Venezuela.”

According to Barry Cannon, an assistant professor at the Centre for the Study of Politics from Maynooth University in Ireland, the mainstream media have continued to ignore Machado’s “profoundly anti-democratic animus while she simultaneously (mis)appropriates the banner of democracy as her own.” Like MacLeod, Cannon told ZNet that Machado has “consistently supported non-democratic methods of regime change, from indirect to direct economic and military intervention by the U.S.”

Joe Emersberger, who appears in the upcoming documentary ‘Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire’ filmed by journalist Nicholas Ford and myself, and is the co-author of ‘Extraordinary Threat: The US Empire, the media and twenty years of coup attempts in Venezuela’ told ZNet: “Machado has constantly called for foreign intervention. She has even done so in English.”

So why have González and Machado been more successful this time in claiming fraud, despite the presence of hundreds of international observers in Venezuela during the election? Why have all the other eight presidential candidates and their previous public pledges to respect the CNE’s decision been ignored in contrast to González and Machado’s Plataforma Unitaria Democrática (PUD) stance? According to Steve Ellner, a retired professor from the Universidad de Oriente who has lived in Venezuela for decades, “Washington and the mainstream media” have much to do with Machado’s success.

Writing in the NACLA Report on the Americas earlier this year (a publication which has no sympathy for Chavismo), Ellner noted that Francisco Palmieri — head of the U.S. mission for Venezuela located in Bogotá — was asked by a journalist if “any opposition candidate would satisfy the Biden administration.” Palmieri’s reply was clear and simple: “We have and will continue to support María Corina Machado as the candidate of the democratic opposition.” According to Ellner, out of the other opposition candidates, several were far more qualified than Machado and González while not all of them supported their policies for massive privatizations should they have won office.

Currently, seven opposition candidates, as well as Maduro, have presented their records to the Supreme Court after it ordered a full investigation into the election results and the CNE’s claims of a massive cyber-attack. According to  Reuters, “in Venezuela, voting machines print out three copies of voting records for the electoral authority, the ruling party and its challenger.” Machado and González for their part did not submit their results to the Supreme Court and, after calling on the military to abandon Maduro, have seen the country’s top prosecutor open a criminal investigation into them.

After the election, while both pro-government supporters and members of the opposition have been able to pull large numbers of demonstrators in their favor throughout the country, and have overwhelmingly marched peacefully, it has been the guarimberos whose images have been getting wide media coverage as they engage in street battles with local authorities.

Lionized by the media as heroes standing up to an authoritarian government, the guarimberos are balaclava wearing youths, with molotov cocktails and other homemade weapons, who are overwhelmingly hired from the slums by the far right to burn and damage government infrastructure. They have little in common with their fellow middle and upper class Venezuelans who want to see an end to the Maduro administration. In 2017, U.S. journalist Abby Martin interviewed many of these youths until her presence inside the country became known on social media and her own life was put at risk. 

According to journalist Brian Mier on the social platform X, after the election result was declared, among a long list, 12 universities, 7 public pre-schools, 21 elementary schools, 37 public health centers, a public pharmacy, 6 public food distribution centers, 11 Caracas metro stations, 1 community radio station, 38 buses and 27 monuments and statues were attacked or destroyed. Writer Vijay Prashard, who was in Venezuela as an international observer, notes that:

“‘At least two militants of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Isabel Cirila Gil from Bolívar state and Mayauri Coromoto Silva Vilma from Aragua state, were assassinated in the aftermath of the election, two sergeants were killed, and other Chavistas, police, and officials were brutally beaten and captured.”

By 13 August, the country’s attorney general Tarek William Saab reported 25 people dead and 192 having been injured in the post-election violence. According to the Attorney General’s office, at least 2,200 people have been detailed.

Again, in our film Nicholas Ford and I document some of the historical violence in Venezuela by speaking to a few of the victims of the political murders perpetrated by the far-right. Our interviews with Inés Esparragoza, the mother of Orlando Figuera — a young Afro-Venezuelan man who was brutally burnt and stabbed to death in 2017 by right-wing thugs — and with Zulay Aguirre — the mother of parliamentarian Robert Serra who was murdered in his own home together with his assistant María Herrera — left no doubts who they considered responsible for the murders of their sons: i.e. leaders of the ultra-right in Venezuela who promote and fund such violence.

Speaking to ZNet, 69-year-old retiree Juan Montoya from a middle class suburb in Valencia, Estado Carabobo said: “The opposition has lost the streets in recent events as Chavismo has filled them. Of course, the opposition has people but most people in Venezuela do not accept violence.” Supportive of the government, in his view, what has occurred in Venezuela is a “coup produced by social media” while outside forces “clearly want to see a Guaidó 2.0” — a reference to the ultra-right politician Juan Guaidó who, in 2019, swore himself in as president with the backing of the Trump administration. 

Jimmy Acosta, another supporter of Maduro, said that the large demonstrations in favor of the government highlighted the backing the Bolivarian revolution still has and sent a “clear message to both the opposition and the international community.” Living in the lower middle-class area Montalbán and working as a public employee, Acosta, at age 49, added that “there is certainly a sector of the population that wants nothing to do with Chavismo,” however, “that’s not to say that all Venezuelans are against, that’s not true.” Acosta commented that he takes deep offense to the racism of the opposition given that he was “highly educated” and “proudly identified” with the Bolivarian revolution.

According to Darianny Flores, a 26-year-old university student from the affluent suburb of Bello Montes studying industrial relations at a private university, there is no “doubt there was the greatest fraud I have witnessed in my entire life.” Conceding it was the first election she ever voted in, Flores claimed her sister was “a member of the polling station in my town” and “everything indicated that Edmundo González had won in each table.” “During the last few years,” added Flores, “the opposition has gained strength” as “people have realized that the quality of life in the country has only worsened” while the “Chavistas” she knew “have definitively accepted that Maduro has led the country to misery, which is why now the opposition is getting bigger and bigger.”

In the working-class town Caricuao, Caraca, Joseph Castellanos — a 47-year-old worker in the informal economy — notes that while he has not “participated in pro-Maduro marches,” they “have blocked the numerous roads they march through.” “Like always,” said he, “historically, Chavismo has had marches which are very large and that’s not the exception now.”

In a similar manner, Castellanos told ZNet the opposition has had “very important marches.” In his view, judging which side gets more people onto the streets is “relative” and “hard to measure.” Asked if he believed there had been fraud in the elections, Catellanos said he wouldn’t be bold enough to make such a claim although “support for Maduro or Chavismo in general has declined a lot.” In his view, the problem with the opposition is they have long cried fraud but have never been able to prove it when the CNE releases its numbers. Castellanos is of the view that the contested election will be solved once the CNE releases its full numbers. 

According to Emersberger, in the event that Machado and González were to win, how could their victory ever be “seen as free and fair?” “Impossible,” claims Emersberger as, “how could anyone ever know if Venezuelans voted for them or merely voted for the end of murderous U.S. sanctions?” Estimates by the Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in Washington note that due to the impact of U.S. sanctions, some “40,000 deaths from 2017 to 2018” occurred. As of April 2024, the United Nations Refugee Agency claims 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since 2014 making this “the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history and one of the largest displacement crises in the world.”

At the Palacio de Miraflores — the official dispatch and head office of the President of Venezuela — Maduro and his advisers in the last few years have often struggled to contain the full impact of more than 900 U.S. economic sanctions, rampant inflation and a local business community which, despite some sections happily doing business with the government, are at their core committed to removing Chavismo from office.

Add to these issues Venezuela’s historic problems with corruption and the government’s dilemmas at times look completely unsolvable. Earlier this year, the country’s oil minister Tareck El Aissami was seen in handcuffs flanked by officers. According to the country’s top prosecutor, Attorney General Tarek William Saab, El Aissami is said to have had ties to an alleged scheme involving selling Venezuelan oil via the country’s cryptocurrency oversight body in parallel to the state-run Petróleos de Venezuela SA (PDVSA).

Due to the impact of sanctions, Maduro’s government argues it has been forced to make greater concessions to foreign companies looking to do business in Venezuela while embracing a de facto dollarization of the economy. Many of these policies have upset sections within the Chavista base. 

Despite all of these problems, by mid-2023 Maduro’s administration still built over 4.6 million housing units while continuing to invest in health, education and sport using state oil revenues. These policies are still widely popular with many Venezuelans. Historically, since Chavismo has long attempted to exert greater state control over the country’s natural resources such as oil, gas, bauxite, gold, and diamonds to fund the government’s programs, this popular control has always been the real crux of the conflict between the Chavistas, the extreme sectors of the opposition and the United States. Enjoying the world’s largest proven oil reserves, the government earlier this year claimed to have secured investments from the BRICS countries while Maduro declared: “Here there are two visions, two models: ours, of sovereignty and productive recovery, and theirs, which is all about looting and privatizing.”

For the next coming weeks though, attention will continue to turn towards the Supreme Court and its investigation into the election. On 5 August President of the Court, Caryslia Rodríguez, said her judicial body “will begin an examination of the material submitted for a period of up to 15 days, which may be extended.” Once the CNE’s full results, and alleged evidence of a serious cyber-attack are released, the world will know if Maduro won the election or if the claims of fraud by the U.S.-backed opposition, for once, have any substance.

Rodrigo Acuña is an independent writer on Latin American politics. Together with journalist Nicholas Ford, next month he will release his first documentary titled ‘Venezuela: The Cost of Challenging an Empire.’ Rodrigo holds a PhD from Macquarie University. You can follow him on X at @rodrigoac7.

Editor’s update: On Aug 22, the Venezuelan Supreme Court issued its judgment about the validity of the electoral council’s official result, agreeing that it is valid. However, the official voting center tallies have still not been published.

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