Loser stays: Venezuela’s Maduro is clinging to power like Lukashenko in Belarus, but all is not yet lost for the opposition

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The former bus driver follows in Alexander Lukashenko's footsteps

In Venezuela, violent clashes between citizens protesting electoral fraud and police supporting the regime that rigged the vote have continued since July 28. At least 16 people have been killed and more than a thousand detained thus far. The National Electoral Council, fully controlled by Nicolas Maduro, released the election results late on the night of the election. They asserted that Maduro had won 51.2% of the vote, while his opponent, Edmundo González, won 44.2%.

Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the Venezuelan opposition and Gonzalez's mentor, quickly refuted this data by presenting her own. She said she had gained access to copies of the authentic results recorded at 81% of the polling stations across the country. These showed a convincing victory for González, who reportedly won 67% of the actual ballots cast, while Maduro won 30%. On July 31, these figures were confirmed by the independent sociological group AltaVista, which obtained data from 1,500 voting machines (there are around 30,000 in the country). Its data coincides with those presented by Corina Machado: 66% of voters gave their support to Gonzalez, with Maduro receiving 31%.

After some confusion, the White House also took a position. Brian Nichols, Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, confirmed that Edmundo Gonzalez received 67% of the vote versus 30% for Maduro. “The tabulation of these detailed results clearly show an irrefutable result — Edmundo Gonzalez won with 67 percent of these votes compared to 30 percent for Maduro, a margin of victory for Gonzalez of 3.9 million votes and 37 percentage points,” Nichols said on July 31.

Maduro appears to have copied Alexander Lukashenko's recipe from the 2020 elections in Belarus to a tee. After losing at the ballot box to stand-in opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, Lukashenko claimed to have won 81.04% of the vote — then, with Russian help, his regime put down a nationwide wave of peaceful protests.

The ongoing events in Venezuela inspire a clear sense of déjà vu for a second reason. In 2018, America also disputed an election that Maduro narrowly won — at least officially. Back then, the U.S. and over 50 other nations recognized Juan Guaidó as Venezuela's legitimate president. However, Guaidó's influence waned, and he now resides in Miami. Will the international community now recognize Edmundo Gonzalez as president, repeating history? Besides the U.S. and Europe, Peru has recognized Gonzalez's victory, with more countries likely to follow.

Maria Corina Machado told The Guardian that Maduro's departure is “inevitable.” The Atlantic wrote that “Venezuela passed the torch, even if Maduro didn’t.” But will Maduro actually surrender power? And if he does “pass the torch,” who will be its next holder

After all, the official election outcome in Venezuela, where the National Electoral Council, parliament, and military are under Maduro's control, was predictable. These elections have highlighted yet again that dictators rarely relinquish power willingly.

Indications of planned electoral fraud emerged the Friday before the vote, when Caracas closed its airspace to prevent four former Latin American presidents — from Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, and Bolivia — from arriving as election observers. “The Copa [Airlines] plane with [former Panamanian] President Mireya Moscoso and the other ex-presidents was not allowed to leave Tocumen airport because Venezuela closed its airspace,” tweeted incumbent Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino. “Maybe another Copa flight to Panama from Caracas has not been allowed to take off.”

Preventing such figures from observing elections is unprecedented in the region. Even Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro did not show such blatant disregard for other Latin American leaders.

But this was not the first sign that the Maduro regime was nervous about the vote. Long before the Latin American former presidents were blocked from entering Venezuela, EU observers were also barred from monitoring the elections.

Maduro, a former bus driver with a penchant for speaking in clichés and making exaggerated gestures, has shown the world the middle finger. His message is clear: “You will tolerate me as long as I live — and you will do nothing to me.”

Sadly, he has reason to believe that the tactic will succeed. Just a quarter of a century ago, Venezuela was the richest country in South America, but its neighbors have stood by as Maduro’s disastrous rule — which began in 2013 after Hugo Chávez’s death from cancer — transformed the country into one of the greatest tragedies in Latin American history.

According to the UN, over 10,000 Venezuelans have been killed by state security agencies under Maduro, comparable to the death tolls from Latin America's right-wing dictatorships in the 1970s. Ninety percent of the population lives in poverty, millions of children are malnourished, and the average Venezuelan adult has lost eight kilograms in the past 11 years. Since Maduro took power, nearly 8 million Venezuelans — about one-fifth of the population — have fled the country.

Former Venezuelan Minister of Trade and Industry Moisés Naím, a highly respected expert, describes Maduro's regime as “a den of thieves.”

“Venezuela is a hub for traffickers in every kind of contraband: from price-controlled consumer staples to cocaine bound to the United States and Europe, as well as diamonds, gold, coltan, weapons, and sex workers. [...] Bankrupted by corruption, mismanagement, and sanctions that have crippled the oil sector — the main source of foreign currency — the de facto state is broke and living off of the comparatively meager proceeds of illegal mining and illicit oil exports facilitated by Russian companies,” Naím wrote in a Foreign Affairs column in 2020. Despite these issues, Venezuela's neighbors have largely remained passive, issuing reports on human rights violations — but without taking further action.

The failure of U.S. policy

Washington also bears some responsibility for allowing an American state to fail as abjectly as Maduro’s Venezuela has. And the mistakes have been bipartisan.

“From former U.S. Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump to Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chilean President Gabriel Boric, every leader’s diplomatic response to the Venezuelan regime, whether based on constructive engagement or coercive pressure, failed,” writes the World Politics Review. “Neither carrots nor sticks have created change.”

“Venezuela's stolen election shows the bipartisan failure of U.S. policy,” writes Washington Post columnist Max Boot.

From one administration to the next, U.S. policies have certainly changed. Donald Trump imposed draconian economic sanctions against Caracas. Combined with the mediocrity of Maduro's ministers, this quickly led to an even more pronounced economic downturn — one comparable to the U.S. Great Depression of the 1930s.

Trump even promised to oust Maduro, and there was a moment in 2019 when many in the world expected the U.S. to launch a military intervention to follow through. However, it appears Trump was bluffing. Experts warned that American soldiers could become mired in the Venezuelan jungle, similar to the way they were in the Vietnam War, and no military intervention in Venezuela took place. Efforts to establish a maritime blockade around Venezuela also failed, as Iranian and Venezuelan tankers successfully bypassed the cordon to deliver oil to Cuba.

The Biden administration made a U-turn in U.S. policy towards Venezuela, opting for a strategy to appease Maduro’s regime. Biden’s White House proposed lifting oil sanctions in exchange for Maduro conducting fair and transparent elections. The offer was made after Venezuelan government representatives met with the opposition in Barbados in the fall of 2023. There, the envoys from Caracas demonstrated in every way possible a willingness to compromise.

But Maduro did not live up to his end of the bargain. Oil sanctions were eased, and yet the Venezuelan authorities did not fulfil the main condition: to give Maria Corina Machado the right to participate in the elections. Without her name on the ballot, the election turned into a typical farce.

This should not have come as a surprise to decision makers in Washington. It is important to recall that Maduro has been declared a criminal in the United States. Back in March 2020, a court in Manhattan accused the Venezuelan president of drug trafficking and offered 15 million dollars to those who would help arrest him. The U.S. government has also accused Maduro of human trafficking.

Another representative of the Maduro regime, the country's former vice president and oil minister Tareck El Aissami, was placed on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's list of most wanted drug dealers back in 2019. He has also been accused of having ties to terrorist groups in the Middle East — including Hamas and Hezbollah.

In recent months, Caracas has intensified its criminal activities against the United States. Venezuelan intelligence agencies have launched a large-scale infiltration of its agents into U.S. territory, emulating the methods of their Cuban mentors.

In March 2024, Senator Marco Rubio and Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar urged President Biden to designate the Venezuelan gang “Tren de Aragua” as a Transnational Criminal Organization. This gang, consisting of former Venezuelan prison inmates, has spread violence in U.S. cities and is notorious for its crimes in Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru.

Oil is to blame

Despite this recent history, Biden sought negotiations with Venezuelan authorities, hoping they would abandon the drug trade — which brings the regime multi-billion dollar profits — liberalize their political system, and allow for a change of power. This mission proved not only impossible, but unwise.

The objective of the campaign to appease Maduro was clear: the U.S. sought Venezuelan oil to help lower global prices. Following the easing of sanctions, Venezuela's exports rose by 5%, though this had little noticeable impact on the world market.

“Nothing terrifies an American president more than a gasoline-pump price spike,” Bob McNally, president of consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group and former White House policy official under George W. Bush, recently told The Wall Street Journal. “They will go to great lengths to prevent this, especially in an election year.”

By fighting over prices at the pump back home, however, the Biden administration has fallen into a different trap. Polls have shown that if Nicolás Maduro remains in power, one out of three Venezuelans will seek ways to leave the country — which potentially means millions of hungry and desperate people will show up at America's doorstep. It is no secret that the issue of the “southern border” is one of the Democrats’ chief electoral vulnerabilities as Kamala Harris campaigns to prevent Donald Trump from returning to the White House, and the U.S. election is less than three months away. In this way, America's presidential election has bizarrely overlapped with Venezuela's.

The uncontrolled flow of migrants is one reason Washington will have to continue talking with Maduro for as long as he manages to hold on to power. Presenting a triumphant air as he begins his third term, Maduro has even expressed a willingness to hold new negotiations with the U.S. — provided that his unreasonable conditions are met. “If the U.S. government is ready to stop threatening Venezuela and respect its sovereignty, we can resume the dialogue,” the Venezuelan dictator said, promising “not to lose patience with U.S. lies and failure to honor agreements.”

The Iron Lady of Venezuela

In the current election, the opposition candidate was Edmundo Gonzalez, a quiet and modest 74-year-old former diplomat. But no one in Caracas, Washington, or any of the capitals in between had any doubt that the real opposition leader was 56-year-old Maria Corina Machado, who Maduro has banned from running for 15 years.

“The international community now must stand squarely behind the democratic movement and Machado,” Bill Brownfield, the former U.S. ambassador to Caracas, told The Washington Post. “Just as it did with Nelson Mandela, Lech Walesa, and Cory Aquino.”

Overcoming regime pressure and wariness from other opposition figures, Machado was able to organize the most powerful protest movement since Chávez left office. Most importantly, she was able to overcome years of repression from a regime that, with the help of armed gangs — so-called “colectivos” — attacked anti-government demonstrators, arrested dissidents, and deliberately provoked a mass exodus from the country.

Despite being banned from direct participation in the election, Machado’s efforts brought millions of Venezuelans to the polls on Election Day. As she traveled around the country in the run-up to the vote, women cried in her arms and men asked for protection. “Maria, help us!” — they shouted.

Machado has been battling the regime for more than a decade. From 2011-2014, she served as a conservative member of the National Assembly, but was often criticized even by colleagues for her inflexibility and unwillingness to compromise her principles. Journalists dubbed her the “Iron Lady,” drawing parallels to former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who has always been Machado's idol.

In 2012, as a member of the National Assembly, Machado clashed with Hugo Chávez in a televised debate, accusing him of exploiting Venezuelans through continuous expropriations. “Eagles don't hunt flies,” Chávez responded — implying he was the eagle and she was the fly.

Unlike Chávez, his successor Maduro directly targeted Machado. In the weeks leading up to this year’s election, she faced a range of covert attacks launched by the regime. Hotels around the country where she had previously stayed turned out to be closed. The gas station where she filled her car’s tank was suddenly under repair. A doctor who took selfies with her was suddenly fired. The owners of the cafes where she bought empanadas were warned that they could be driven out of business. Finally, a few days before the election, Maria Corina discovered that her car’s brake hose had been cut.

What lies ahead for Venezuela? The opposition's primary goal is to push for the publication of voting protocols to prove the election was stolen.

Maduro's advisers are urging him to arrest Maria Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez on charges of attempted coup d'état — though it's doubtful the government would dare to take such a drastic step. Venezuela's political isolation is growing by the day, and the U.S. is likely to strengthen oil sanctions despite its reluctance to sever ties with Caracas. Maduro has a lot to lose — unlike Lukashenko, he has a lot of oil to trade. Russia and Iran are far away, but America is close. Election falsification, which Venezuelans have called a fraud of historic proportions, could represent a time bomb for Maduro and his “den of thieves.” For now, however, no one knows when the detonator might go off.