Sunday’s (21) regional elections in Venezuela were distorted by unequal rules of the game, violence and preliminary injunctions against opposition leaders, European Union election observers said on Tuesday (23).
But the mere presence of independent international monitors, the first in 15 years to follow an election in the country, underscored how deeply Nicolás Maduro has consolidated in power since he first took office in 2013.
After spending years using force to quell dissension and subverting the last vestiges of Venezuela’s democratic institutions, Maduro has perfected a political system with which he is no longer too afraid of international scrutiny when competing with carefully evaluated opponents, say analysts and opposition leaders.
The regime has shown that by preventing the most important and popular opposition leaders from running for electoral office, dividing opposition parties, encouraging voter apathy and retaining a loyal minority dependent on government donations, it can win elections without resorting to direct fraud, even with minimal popular support.
The ruling Socialist Party has won at least 19 of Venezuela’s 23 state governments and most mayors, despite running a shattered economy and, according to opinion polls, having the support of only about 15% of the population.
Under Maduro’s regime, one in five Venezuelans has fled the country, and 95% of those who remain do not earn enough to cover their basic needs, according to a study by the country’s top universities.
The significant victory of the party benefited heavily from divisions in the opposition. Some opposition leaders boycotted the election, as did most of them in other recent elections. Those who chose to participate shared the opposition vote with factions that had made pacts with Maduro or taken a softer line towards the dictator in order to take advantage of the economic liberalization he has allowed in recent years.
The EU observer mission said on Tuesday that it could not describe Sunday’s election as free or fair, partly because of the unfair advantages enjoyed by the ruling party and partly because of the absence of the rule of law.
“There is a political situation that, added to the serious socio-economic situation, has caused the exodus of millions of Venezuelans,” the European Parliament representative on the observer mission, Jordi Cañas, told a news conference in the capital, Caracas, on Tuesday.
But observers drew attention to several democratic improvements in Sunday’s election, even describing the country’s electronic vote-processing system as “reliable”.
The United States, which does not recognize Maduro as president, called the election profoundly flawed, but praised opposition candidates who decided to take part in order to retain the few democratic posts they still held.
At polling stations in Caracas on Sunday, many voters expressed little confidence in the fairness of the election, but said they chose to participate anyway, in some cases because they saw their vote as the last tool they had in the fight for change.
“I know the whole process is controlled,” said carpenter Blas Roa, 55, in Caracas, who voted for the first time since 2015. “But if I don’t vote, I won’t be doing anything.”
Most Venezuelans didn’t bother.
Just 42 percent of voters went to the polls — the lowest turnout in any election the opposition has participated in over the past two decades. After 20 years of Socialist Party rule, few people in the country still have hopes of radical transformation. Instead, people choose to take advantage of new economic freedoms to improve their precarious livelihoods.
That government-induced apathy turned out to be Maduro’s biggest weapon in the elections, said opposition leader Freddy Superlano, who ran for government in the cattle-producing state of Barinas, a former stronghold of the Socialist Party where its founder, Hugo Chávez, was born.
On Tuesday afternoon (23), the dispute was still too close for a winner to be declared.
The result would have been different, Superlano said, if the opposition factions had put their divisions aside and joined together in a joint campaign. “We are fighting not just the candidate, but the entire power of the state,” he said over the phone from Barinas.
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