Transcript: Maduro’s humiliating election

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This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Maduro’s humiliating election’

Michael Stott Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Michael Stott, Latin America editor of the Financial Times, standing in for Gideon while he’s on holiday. This week’s edition is about Venezuela’s disputed election. My guests are Phil Gunson, a Caracas-based senior analyst for the International Crisis Group, and Michael Shifter, the former president of the Inter-American dialogue think-tank in Washington. Both have followed Venezuela for the last quarter of a century. Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of the July 28th election, but the opposition said that its candidate was the real winner and has published thousands of voting tally receipts online as evidence. So what happens next?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

News clip The opposition candidate and the man the US government has recognised as the winner of the election, Edmundo González, hasn’t appeared in public for days. His colleague María Corina did break cover and hold a mass protest over the disputed results. (people chanting) Hundreds of others, though, know they are wanted and have had to leave their homes. They dread a knock on the door by the security forces.

Michael Stott Thousands of people have been detained in Venezuela for demonstrating against Maduro, or casting doubt on his claims that he won a third term in last month’s election. The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro’s allies, has so far refused to publish a breakdown of the results despite mounting international pressure, which increased when Washington recognised the opposition as the real winner. But Maduro has said in televised address that he doesn’t care what the United States thinks and has no intention of standing down.

[MADURO SPEAKING IN A TELEVISED ADDRESS]

Michael Stott So I started by asking Phil Gunson in Caracas, given that Venezuela has a long history of disputed elections, what’s different about this one?

Phil Gunson Well, there’s always been a considerable amount of doubt as to whether Chávismo, that’s the movement that was created by Hugo Chávez, launched by Hugo Chávez in 1992, was an attempt to overthrow by military force a democratically elected government. Whether that movement, which came to power eventually through democratic means, would leave the same way. In other words, whether when it eventually lost a national election like this, whether it would hand over power. Chávez himself was always very ambiguous about that. There was this ambiguity because within Chávismo, they claimed to be fully democratic. They claimed that they held more elections than anybody. That it was, in fact, the opposition that was devoted to violent means to overthrow them.

And so the scale of Maduro’s loss to the opposition candidate Edmundo González puts us in a completely different political situation. Maduro has now answered the question. It’s clear that he has no intention of handing over power, despite all the evidence that he lost the election. And what that threatens to do is to put us on the road to something that looks much more like Nicaragua under Daniel Ortega. In other words, a full-blown dictatorship with severe repression and complete closing down of the space for political activity for NGOs to operate — any critics, in fact, of the government. And that’s the path that we seem to be on at the moment.

Michael Stott So, Phil, when I was in Caracas on election day, it seemed pretty clear to me there was a huge desire for change. In your mind, is there any doubt that the opposition won the election?

Phil Gunson Venezuela’s electronic voting system contains a number of mechanisms that are intended to overcome the possibility that the electoral authority could falsify the result. And what that means in practice is that the machines, before they even transmit the results of an election to the central computer, they produce paper evidence. They produce a paper trail in the form of what’s known as the actas, which are the voting tallies from each machine. Those voting tallies are very hard to falsify indeed, not least because they include a QR code which matches the figures outlined on the tally so that one is comparable to the other. Those tallies are then signed by the witnesses for each party, and the election workers. And all the parties involved in the election are entitled to a copy of those actas.

Now, in this particular instance, the election day itself went off quite peacefully. But at the end of the day, as the polls were closing, government workers tried very hard, in some cases helped by the soldiers who were in charge of guarding the polling stations, to prevent representatives of the opposition getting hold of these paper vote tallies. But the opposition had organised against this possibility and managed to get over 80 per cent of these. Now the government says that those are fake, but it hasn’t been able to produce or has decided not to produce its own copies of those tallies. And of course, that casts a considerable degree of suspicion over the government’s version that Maduro won.

The margin of victory for Edmundo González, the opposition candidate, is very high, but it’s in line with what the opinion polls have suggested before the election. I think really all impartial observers are quite clear that what’s happening here is that the government is claiming an election victory that it didn’t achieve and is unable to prove what it says. Whereas, of course, the opposition has not only obtained the actas, the vote tallies, but it’s put them up on the internet for everybody to see.

Michael Stott So, Michael, if I could bring you in here. Do you think this election marks a turning point for the country?

Michael Shifter Well, I think we have seen the popular sectors in Venezuela for the first time ever rise up and destroy statues of Hugo Chávez, the symbol of the revolution in Venezuela, an enormously popular leader, I think is quite profound and I think reveals the intense anger against the Maduro regime for presiding over an utter collapse of the economy and an unprecedented human rights humanitarian crisis. That is new and I think it’s rattled Maduro to the point that he seems quite cornered. And I think he’s at a weaker position that he’s been in the last 11 years.

On top of that, the economy is virtually paralysed and there’s no confidence for investors to come in at this point because of the very serious political crisis. So all those elements we haven’t seen in the last quarter century that I’ve been following Venezuela since Chávez was elected in 1998.

Michael Stott Phil, you’ve witnessed the crackdown and the protests at first hand, but these, at least for now, appear to have stopped. What sort of a character is Maduro? Has he been underestimated?

Phil Gunson I think it’s fair to say that Nicolás Maduro was underestimated when he first came to power back in 2013. He’d very much been in the shadow of his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez. He certainly didn’t have Chávez’s charisma. He’d been his foreign minister for many years. He was his vice-president in the latter stages of Chávez’s presidency, and he was often dismissed as just a former bus driver. He was a bus driver and union leader who’d never had formal education at university level and was, to a degree, an ideologue in the sense that he had emerged from a tiny Marxist-Leninist splinter group in the 60s and 70s and was trained in Cuba.

Not only did he not have Chávez’s charisma, he wasn’t going to have Chávez’s access to resources either, because very soon after Maduro came to power, the oil price on which Venezuela crucially depends for its economic health plummeted. And Chávez had unfortunately spent all the money. He’d spent the money that Venezuela should have saved up during the boom years of the oil industry. And Maduro, for many people, was a passing phenomenon who wouldn’t even last six months in power. Well, here we are more than a decade later, and Maduro has maintained his grip at the top. He won a disputed election in 2018, and now, of course, he’s faced with this very difficult situation where he’s clearly lost an election but is determined to cling to power.

Maduro is, I think you might say, not as pragmatic or not as flexible or creative as Hugo Chávez. It’s possible that Chávez might have found a way to acknowledge the opposition’s electoral result and somehow nullify it in practice, which is a modus operandi that we’ve seen a number of times in the history of Chávismo in power. But of course, now comes the great test. Now is when we’re going to see whether or not Maduro is up to the challenge of remaining in power without popular support.

Michael Stott From what I saw in Caracas in the days after the election, there was an extraordinary atmosphere of fear. People were very, very frightened, more frightened perhaps, than ever before. Now, Michael, can Maduro stay in power via that kind of crackdown and repression?

Michael Shifter I think it really is going to be very difficult for him. I don’t see Venezuela becoming another Nicaragua or another Cuba. It is too large, too complex a country. And I think that there is going to be a lot of protests that he’s going to be unable to completely quash. And I think that there are going to be senior people within the regime and eventually within the military, which is crucial to any transition scenario that are going to begin to dissent and defect from the regime. And that will complicate Maduro’s plan to remain in power.

It’s conceivable that he could hang on simply through force and repression and crackdown and using the safety valve of millions more leaving Venezuela. But I have serious doubts, and I would think that the most probable scenario is that there is going to be intense pressure — mainly domestically, but also internationally — that’s going to force some change. I think it could be in various forms, but it will be a change within a framework and context of a transition to another governing arrangement, whether that’s the opposition occupying key positions or some power sharing, whatever that means, and Maduro being forced out.

Michael Stott How much authority has Maduro lost as a result of this election, do you think Phil?

Phil Gunson Maduro has definitely been weakened by this. He’s been weakened not only domestically and internationally, but he’s been weakened very particularly, and I think this is very important in terms of his power and authority within the ruling group, which of course is both civilian and military. They have stood behind him in his claim to have won the election. But I think behind the scenes, it’s quite clear that Maduro has suffered a blow to his authority, which has always been based on the idea that he was the best placed to be the leader, to hold off what they see as attacks from US imperialism and its domestic allies. And now he seems to be a loser.

And I think there will be recriminations within Chávismo. There will be a loss of authority for Maduro. In other words, it will be harder for him to achieve consensus among the different groups, the different rival factions within Chávismo. And, of course, crucially, he’s been seen to lose authority over the poor barrios of the cities and the poor rural areas, which traditionally have been the strongholds of the Chavista movement. So the loss of power, the loss of authority is real.

Support from the military, and in particular the military high command, is absolutely crucial to Maduro. He’s only managed to stay in power because he’s been able to recruit the military to his personal projects. A lot of that recruitment, of course, has been done through corrupting them. They’re also complicit in alleged human rights violations, which make individual officers very vulnerable to prosecution were Chávismo to lose power. That’s one of the reasons, perhaps the main reason, why they have stood behind him in his claim to have won the election. Whether or not that will remain true in the future is hard to say. We know that there are divisions within Chávismo. There are factions both on the civilian and the military side, and if a significant faction were to break away, then that could threaten Maduro’s leadership and indeed the grip on power of Chávismo as a movement.

One possibility, of course, is that the military itself would faction into two or more parts, and that’s perhaps the most dangerous scenario, because that would raise the possibility of, if not a civil war or at least serious violence between different factions of the military.

Michael Stott We’ve got at the moment three Latin American powers — Brazil, Colombia and Mexico — trying to mediate in this crisis. Do you give them any chance of success?

Phil Gunson Brazil, Colombia and Mexico are the three most populous countries in Latin America. They all have democratically elected governments that are all left of centre, and therefore, it’s easier for them to pick up the phone and talk to Nicolás Maduro. They’ve been keen to excuse his excesses in the past. They’ve been very critical of US sanctions and the attempt to isolate Maduro internationally. None of them believes in that kind of approach to political problems.

But the question is, if Maduro holds fast to his version that he won the election, what are they actually going to do beyond perhaps downgrading their delegation to his inauguration? At the moment, they are discussing among themselves how best to approach this. Maduro remains open to talking to them, but at the same time, he’s made it very clear that he has no intention of discussing the issue of who won the election. And so whether or not they are able to persuade him to sit down again to talks with the opposition and, if so, on what terms is very much an open question.

It’s clearly not feasible to imagine the government and opposition on their own will be able to resume talks. The distrust and even hatred between the two sides is so great, and they will therefore need some kind of international framework backing possible guarantees. And these three countries are perhaps the best placed in the first instance to provide those.

Michael Stott And Michael, if we turn now to the United States, which is a key player in this, the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, has congratulated the opposition candidate Edmundo González on winning the most votes. But he’s also stopped short of recognising González as president-elect. And for now, the US has not taken any other measures with regard to sanctions. So what options does Washington have for dealing with this crisis?

Michael Shifter I think there is a memory of the experience of Juan Guaidó in 2019 and recognising him as the interim president, and that didn’t work out very well. So I think the Biden administration is adopting a very different approach and a more cautious approach towards Maduro. I think that clearly the United States can be very helpful in trying to work with the government and in concert, in close consultation with the opposition, to try to work out some sort of transition framework and eventually an exit strategy for Maduro.

If this government and this regime is no longer viable, which I believe it’s not, I think the United States can play a key role in trying to fashion and support a process that’s orderly, that’s peaceful, but that does have a very clear objective of moving towards a transition scenario. So I think they could use their weight for that purpose. And I think that if they recognised Edmundo González as the interim president, their ability to perform that role could be undermined.

Michael Stott Is there a risk, with the US presidential election in November, that the attention in Washington will simply turn elsewhere? There are multiple international crises. We’ve got Ukraine. We’ve got the Middle East. So will Venezuela just simply slip down the list and become forgotten in Washington?

Michael Shifter I think that’s a real risk. And it’s also a real risk in Latin America and the three countries of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico that are together, that there is a certain fatigue with Venezuela. The issue doesn’t quite rank as high as the crisis in the Middle East and the war in Europe with Ukraine and Russia or China. You know, there is a problem or risk of bandwidth of dealing with this, which needs the engagement of really senior officials as well as the Latin American team and the administration. But I think one has to look at the stakes that are involved in Venezuela. It’s not just a big country in South America. It’s a country that’s produced almost 8mn refugees and migrants throughout the region, and about a half a million to the United States. So I think broader questions of regional peace and stability and security are very much at play.

Michael Stott How much influence could Washington have, in your view, Phil?

Phil Gunson I think Washington’s options are fairly limited at this point. The approach of the Biden administration has been to use the very severe sanctions regime that Maduro was subjected to by the Trump administration, and also Maduro phased relief from those sanctions in return for steps towards democracy. And that’s how we got to this point. The election, even though wasn’t fully free and fair, took place. It was competitive. So competitive, in fact, that the opposition won. And that’s thanks in large measure to the Biden administration’s negotiations with Maduro using sanctions relief as a carrot, if you like. But that policy appears, at least for now, to have reached a dead end. Maduro did hold a competitive election, but he didn’t respect the results. So what should Washington do now? Already in the build up to the election, Washington restored most of the sanctions that it lifted because Maduro was clearly not abiding by the terms of his agreement with the opposition.

Now, obviously, there’s pressure to pile on more sanctions, and I think the Biden administration will resist that. And for now, its line appears to be, and I think, correctly, that we need to give Brazil, Colombia, Mexico time to see if they can bring the two sides back to the negotiating table. And in any case, there are several months to go before Maduro is due to begin his third term of office, which will be in the beginning of January. So there’s a certain margin for now to allow for attempts to persuade Maduro to reverse his stance, or at least to offer some kind of path out of the crisis.

Michael Stott Venezuela’s economy hit rock bottom around 2019, 2020, but it’s recovered a little since. What’s the outlook for the country if Maduro stays in power?

Phil Gunson If Maduro manages to stay in power, then the prospects of Venezuela are really very bleak. The sanctions will remain in place. It will be impossible for Venezuela to renegotiate its enormous foreign debt. There won’t be the kind of inflows of foreign capital that are required to recover the economy from the doldrums in which it finds itself. Under Maduro, the economy has shrunk by 75 to 80 per cent of GDP. It’s what some economists here call a dwarf economy, which is, of course, why so many people have left the country.

I think the prospects are in the very best of circumstances for continued stagnation, impoverishment and isolation. And of course, things could get a whole lot worse if there’s not enough dollar income coming in to the government. Of course, most of that depends on recovery of the oil industry, which is not happening. Then it’s going to be very difficult, among other things, for the government to maintain the artificially high exchange rate. The bolívar, the Venezuelan currency, is severely overvalued against the dollar. It’s being propped up by dollars brought in by oil sales. But that policy has a limited shelf life. It’s not going to be possible to continue with that forever once there is a devaluation and that policy of maintaining the exchange rate fails. Then what we will see is an increase in inflation that’s going to make the already impoverished Venezuelan population even poorer, Venezuela suffering a complex humanitarian emergency, and there’s no prospect at all of that improving under Maduro. Most Venezuelans, in fact, can’t put enough food on the table, let alone provide for their families in every other respect.

Michael Stott Nearly 8mn Venezuelans have already left the country to seek a better life abroad. If Maduro remains in power, will we see another flood of refugees?

Phil Gunson I’m a little sceptical about the idea that there will be another huge wave of emigration from Venezuela. Certainly, it’s the case that polling before the election suggested that very large numbers of Venezuelans were contemplating leaving if Maduro won the election. However, it’s one thing to contemplate leaving and it’s another thing to actually do it. So many people have left Venezuela and the remaining population is older, it’s poorer, and in many cases it consists of people who don’t have the kind of skills that would enable them to survive outside the country.

Also, the environment outside of Venezuela, the environment in neighbouring countries and in the US is growing a lot more hostile to migrants. In the last few years, the economic situation is worse. There are no jobs. There’s more xenophobia. There are more restrictions on people’s movement from one country to another. So overall, I think that while certainly some people will leave, I doubt that there’s going to be a massive wave of the kind that we’ve seen before. And of course, the neighbours are very much hoping that that doesn’t happen because it places a severe strain on their own economies.

Michael Stott The refugee outflow so far has been quite extraordinary. It’s the biggest refugee crisis in the Americas. So, Michael, how high do you rate the risk that if Maduro clings on, we’ll see another wave of refugees leaving Venezuela, perhaps heading to the United States and maybe even arriving there around the time of the presidential election?

Michael Shifter Well, I think there is a risk of that. And there are studies that have come out that estimate perhaps another 3mn on top of the 8mn that have already left, would leave Venezuela. And with many of them trying to go northward to the United States. And of course, that becomes a very serious and high priority electoral issue in the presidential campaign. Migration is one of the top issues and it’s been on the agenda. The presidential candidates have already addressed this, both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. And Trump has used this issue to show that the Biden-Harris administration has been weak, that it tried to negotiate with Maduro. And this is the result, not only a deepening crisis in Venezuela, but an aggravated migration crisis that’s being felt at home here in the United States.

So I wouldn’t be surprised if this becomes an issue in the campaign again, playing into narratives of weak or strong leadership. I don’t think Trump has the answer to the Venezuela crisis, and it’s unclear what he would do if he would repeat the policy that did fail completely, a sanctions policy, maximum pressure policy was an utter failure, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be fodder that he’s going to exploit to the extent he can in a very intense and tight election.

Michael Stott So to conclude, Phil, what do you think is the most likely scenario for Venezuela in this post-election period?

Phil Gunson Given that — for now, at least — Maduro appears to have solid backing both from the civilian and military components of the leadership, then I think the most likely short-term scenario is that Maduro will remain in power. Whether that situation will persist in the medium to long term is much harder to say. I think the problem here, essentially, in the short term at least, is that it’s very difficult, if not impossible, for either side to back down. It’s hard to imagine that Maduro is suddenly going to admit that he did, in fact, lose the election, or even that he’s going to sit down with the current opposition leadership, whom he’s described as fascists and terrorists. Likewise, it’s very difficult to imagine the opposition, under the leadership of María Corina Machado, accepting anything less than an admission that Maduro lost. And of course, under those circumstances, the status quo has to remain the most plausible scenario.

However, I think there are things that it’s impossible to tell right now, things that are going on behind the scenes to which we don’t have access, and most importantly, behind the scenes in Chávismo. To what extent there’s a frustrated desire on the part of a lot of Chavistas, perhaps even including some of the senior leadership, to emerge from this crisis situation, even if it means giving up some privileges. Now, in a sense, would be the best opportunity that they’re likely to get than negotiating still, from a position of strength, they hold control of Parliament, the Supreme Court, the military, all the important institutions of government. And so one would imagine that if they were to sit down to talk, they might get a better deal now than conceivably in the future.

Michael Stott And turning to you, Michael, it’s obviously hazardous to make predictions about Venezuela, but on balance, do you think it’s more likely than not that Maduro will still be president this time next year?

Michael Shifter My sense is that he will likely not be president by this time next year. I’ve written extensively about Maduro, the survivor, Maduro who has been underestimated at every turn. But I believe the pillars that have been chiefly responsible for sustaining him in power are disappearing. And that was any claim to a popular mandate — a weakened, divided opposition, an economy where he had some room for manoeuvre — all of those things can explain why he’s been able to survive over 11 years now. But I just don’t see that those pillars will last. I think there are a weakening, and I think we’re likely to see some real defections and dissent within Chávismo. And sustained pressure externally and on the streets. And of course, anything can happen, we’ve learned that and we should all be very humble. But if I were forced to take a stand, I would say I would be surprised if Maduro was still in power a year from now.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

Michael Stott That was Michael Shifter speaking to me from Washington, ending this edition of the Rachman Review. My thanks also to Phil Gunson, who is speaking to us from Caracas. Before I sign off, we’d love to hear a bit more about you and what you like about the show. We’re running a short survey, and anyone who takes part before August the 29th will be entered into a prize draw for a pair of Bose QuietComfort 35 wireless headphones. You can find a link to the survey and terms and conditions for the prize draw in our show notes. Thanks for listening and please join us again next week.

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