Where Venezuela Goes From Here

The day after Venezuela’s hotly-anticipated July 28 presidential election, the National Electoral Council walked an implausible tightrope. It declared that it could not provide the world with the actual results of the vote given that Venezuela has been subjected to a “foreign terrorist cyber-attack.” Yet somehow it conclusively and “irrevocably” declared the autocratic Nicolás Maduro as the winner with 51.2% of the vote over opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia’s 44.2%.

The opposition was ready to prevent a stolen election. Beyond accusing the government of committing a massive fraud, it announced that it had gathered 73.2% of the receipts printed by Venezuela’s electronic voting machines. They took photos of each one of these tally sheets—compiled by their supporters at most of the country’s polling stations—and published them on a website launched a day after the vote. By its calculations, González won with a stunning two-thirds majority.

As tensions boil over in Venezuela, control of the narrative and the moral high ground over the past week has been essential. While the opposition makes its case to the country and the world that it was robbed of a landslide victory, the government is arguing that its own triumph has been obfuscated by a U.S.-led “fascist” coalition. The latter is a case that no one should take seriously.

Venezuela’s democracy has long been in crisis. What began as a broadly popular political movement under the socialist President Hugo Chávez in 1999 gradually slid into autocracy. Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy was unable to keep up with the generous social programs that made Chavismo popular, especially after the 2007 expropriations of foreign oil companies spooked them into leaving. A major oil price slump in 2014 caused the petrostate’s economy to go into freefall and Maduro, who took office in 2013, increasingly shifted from redistribution to repression to hold on to power.

The opposition was under no illusions that this election would be free or fair. But they formed a coalition of anti-Chavista parties called the Democratic Unitary Platform and ran a campaign that expressed trust that the ballot box would vindicate them—while planning for the worst.

Following outrage over the official result, the Maduro government has doubled down on the baseless claim that Venezuelan democracy is under siege by shadowy foreign interventionists. (Memories of a U.S.-linked coup attempt in 2002 and outrage over ongoing U.S. sanctions remain a potent motivator among Chavistas.) The government has also cracked down on protests, with dozens killed and thousands arrested in the past week. Footage of opposition leaders being detained by security forces has also proliferated online.

How will this all unfold?

Maduro seems keen to be seen going through the motions of the democratic process—such as handing over an official complaint to the government-controlled courts to weigh in on the election result. But he has a habit of overplaying his hand. During the campaign, his government banned María Corina Machado, the opposition’s first candidate, from running. This made her a political martyr and further consolidated the movement against his regime. Efforts to interrupt opposition campaign events or close the border to prevent the Venezuelan diaspora—which at 7.7 million is the region’s largest exodus ever—from coming back to vote only backfired.

Maduro is also taking steps to prevent his security forces from defecting. This seems unlikely thanks to the deep embedding of intelligence forces from Cuba, Venezuela’s closest international ally, within the military. Yet videos circulating on social media suggest that some police and military units may already be disobeying orders to repress the mass protests across the country.

The opposition continues to ask Venezuelans to keep calm, and their preparation for a stolen vote is producing results. The U.S. has come out in support of González, calling him the election winner. The E.U., for its part, says it does not recognize Maduro’s win and is demanding independent verification. Even friendlier Latin American governments like Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico are pressuring him to set the record straight. Venezuela has powerful international allies like Russia and China but Maduro looks increasingly alone. An emboldened Machado and González have also come out of hiding, after officials called for their arrest, to hold a massive protest in Caracas. The country’s top prosecutor has announced a criminal probe after they called on the army to abandon their support for Maduro, but the two seem undeterred.

The upshot in Venezuela remains uncertain. But the momentous past few days have been a long time in the making.