Garvan Walshe is a former national and international security policy adviser tot he Conservative Party.
In Venezuela, it was decreed that the minor opposition candidates would get 4.6 per cent between them. But someone, accidentally or deliberately, must have heard it wrong, and gave each of them 4.6 per cent instead. Venezuelan TV announced a preliminary result that had the vote shares totalling 127 per cent.
This tabulation was the most obvious evidence that something dodgy was afoot. The difference between the exit polls that predicted a thumping victory for the opposition (65 per cent for Edmundo González; 31 per cent for the incumbent Nicolás Maduro) and the official results (51 per cent for Maduro, 44 per cent for González) – just enough to allow Maduro to avoid a run-off – added to suspicions.
In case that wasn’t enough, the government refused to release the tallies of polling station results, as required by law.
Ever since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1999, Venezuelans have lived under a corrupt left-wing regime that used oil money to buy allies in the region and political support further abroad (at one point even helping Ken Livingstone out by providing cheap fuel for London buses).
It has been an unmitigated economic disaster. When Chavez took over, Venezuelan GDP per head stood at $12,000 at purchasing power parity (which reflects living standards), comparable to the richer South American countries such as Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile. The figure for Bulgaria, from where I’m writing this column, was $7000.
A quarter of a century of Chavismo later Venezuelans’ income per head stands at $8,500, only a little more than Mauritania ($7,500) and behind Cambodia and Bangladesh. Bulgarians incidentally now average $36,000, while the richest South American country is Chile, at $31,000.
In the region, only Nicaragua, also ruled by a left wing dictator, and traditionally-impoverished Honduras, are as dismal. But at least Honduras and Nicaragua have made progress; both had PPP income per head of around $2,500 in 1999. (In case anyone wonders about the other Latin outpost of Marxism, Cuba doesn’t provide data to the IMF.)
Nor has the regime been any good at the other thing for which authoritarian regimes are celebrated: law and order.
The most recent figures for Venezuela’s homicide rate stands at 20 per 100,000 people (down from a peak of 63 in 2014; but the 2021 figures were probably reduced because of pandemic lockdowns). Seven million people, around a quarter of the total population, have fled the country.
On Sunday, voters made their feelings heard. The united opposition, despite running with Edmundo González as a stand-in candidate after the regime disqualified Maria Corina Machado, the real leader, won a thunderous landslide.
Paper trails issued by voting machines, but kept secret by the regime, gave González almost 70 per cent of the vote; exit polls indicated that he won across all regions, social classes, and other demographics. This was despite intense regime harassment: Machado was banned from flying, and restaurants that served food to Machado and her campaign workers were shut down on spurious tax evasion charges.
Nevertheless the opposition victory has simply been too large to be plausibly concealed by fraud. The Organisation of American States has made clear it does not believe in the results as, crucially, has Gabriel Boric, the hard-left president of Chile. Boric’s intervention forced Brazil’s Luiz Lula to demand election transparency, and shows that opposition to attempts to steal the election crosses party lines.
By contrast, Mexico’s López Obrador and Yolanda Diaz, the leader of Spain’s extreme left (and “second” deputy prime minister) have made common cause with, of all people, Viktor Orbán, and avoided condemning the rigging. Whether Orbán was merely doing his Russian friends’ bidding, or whether the man who legalised voting by people fictitiously registered in houses where they don’t live doesn’t care too much about electoral integrity, is an open question.
So far, Maduro’s regime appears indifferent to international condemnation – its main allies, Russia and Iran, are paragons of electoral transparency while its other supporter, China, strongly supports the continuation in power of incumbents – the CCP is determined to cling to power.
The chief prosecutor has said it has arrested 750 already. It wants to arrest Machado, while other prominent opposition figures are sheltering in the Argentine embassy. Machado herself has declined Costa Rica’s offer of amnesty and vowed to stay and defend her people. Gangs of machine-gun toting thugs, known as colectivos, have started to terrorise pro-opposition neighbourhoods.
A huge demonstration is planned in Caracas after this column goes to press. The question for the regime is whether they will order it to be dispersed by force – and whether the armed forces will obey.
These elections show that Chavismo’s time is up. The regime is as morally and intellectually bankrupt as it is financially. The opposition, and Venezuela’s neighbours, are offering it a peaceful transition out of power like the Communists were had in Eastern Europe in 1989.
But whether it does, or resorts to a bloodbath to stay in power, these elections show the strength of Venezuelans’ desire for freedom. Let’s all hope they get their way.