No foreign interference in Venezuela!
by Gisela Liebe
The outcome of the presidential elections in Venezuela on 28 July 2024 is highly controversial. It is not the first time that an election result in Venezuela has been disputed. There have been accusations of fraud, attempted coups and violent protests in almost every major election in Venezuela. Since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1998, Venezuela has been the number one enemy of the USA in Latin America after Cuba and is being fought with all available means.
For this reason, a highly complex electronic voting system was introduced under Chávez, which is considered to be one of the most secure in the world and is even triple-secured. All voters cast their vote at a machine that prints out a receipt, which the voter inserts into a box. The machine records every vote, and at the end of the voting process, the staff at the respective polling station carry out a final record, during which process the machine prints out a protocol on paper. The representatives of the political parties are the witnesses, and they also receive paper records. The results are then transmitted electronically to a counting centre of the National Electoral Council (CNE). According to consistent reports, the current elections went smoothly and without incident. International election observers, more than 500 of whom were present, praised the “fairness and transparency of the Venezuelan electoral process”.
On the day after the elections, the President of the Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, announced that Nicolás Maduro had received 51.2 % of the vote and Edmundo González, the main candidate of the opposition, 44.2 %. At the same time, he reported that there had been a massive cyber-attack on the data transmission system, which had led to delays. During election night, opposition supporters posted photos of individual counts from the voting machines on various websites and postulated a victory for González with 67 % of the vote. They claimed that electoral fraud had taken place. In the following two days, there were numerous demonstrations, violent riots and clashes with the police, in which at least 20 people were killed. More than 2000 people were arrested.
The actual opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was not allowed to run in the elections and had appointed the largely unknown González as her puppet candidate, called for further mobilisations in order to “claim her election victory”. In an article in the “Wall Street Journal”, she said she was speaking out from a hiding place because she feared for her life. The following day, however, she appeared in public at a demonstration in Caracas.
Foreign reactions to the elections
Foreign countries reacted very differently to the elections, depending on the political orientation of the respective government. While Russia, China and a number of Latin American countries congratulated Maduro on his third term in office, the USA and the EU, as well as a number of their Latin American allies such as Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Costa Rica, Uruguay and Panama, declared González the winner of the election.
The heads of government of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico issued a remarkable joint statement. They called for the eschewal of violence and for awaiting the official detailed election results, which according to the constitution must be published by the electoral council no later than 30 days after the elections. In his daily press conference on 2 August, the Mexican president López Obrador criticised the recognition of the opposition candidate as the winner of the elections by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as an inappropriate overreach. “What the State Department did yesterday is an encroachment. This is not for them, they are overstepping their bounds, it does not contribute to the peaceful coexistence of nations, it has nothing to do with politics, as politics was invented to avoid confrontation and war”.1 He called on all governments not to interfere. “No government is authorised, it is not legal, not legitimate, to announce a decision that declares a candidate from another country the winner or the loser. What is that, as there is no world government? This is not in line with democracy, nor with respect for the independence, freedom and sovereignty of peoples.”
Brazil’s President Lula took a similar stance. He described the electoral process in Venezuela as normal and peaceful and argued that “the people who disagree have the right to speak out and show that they disagree, and the government has the right to prove that it is right”. With regard to the unilateral economic blockade imposed by the USA on Caracas, which has completely ruined the country and forced millions to emigrate, he also spoke out in favour of an end to foreign interference. “Venezuela has the right to build its growth and development model without a blockade. A blockade that has been killing Cuba for 60 years, a blockade that penalises Iran, that penalises Venezuela, we have to end that. Everyone builds their own democratic process, everyone has their own electoral process”.2 Lula made this statement following a phone call with US President Joe Biden, in which they both agreed that the publication of the electoral protocols was essential.
Military support for Maduro
The army leadership very clearly expressed its absolute loyalty to Maduro and recognised his election for a third term in office.
After opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González had previously written an open letter to the army leadership calling on them to ‘stand with the people’ after the electoral fraud, the public prosecutor’s office opened a criminal investigation against them for inciting sedition.
General Laura Richardson, head of the US Army’s Comando Sur, subsequently declared during a trip to Panama that the crisis in Venezuela must be resolved democratically rather than militarily. Last January, at a conference organised by the Atlantic Council, she had emphasised the great importance for the USA of the rich mineral resources and deposits of rare earths in Latin America, attaching particular importance to the lithium triangle between Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. This message was very well understood by the countries concerned.
Attempt at a new colour revolution?
On 12 August, President Maduro declared at a meeting of the National Defence Council that the acts of violence, most of which were committed within 48 hours of the elections, must be thoroughly investigated. Attorney General Tarek William Saab presented a two-volume report on the approximately 600 acts of violence that had been reported under criminal law. Venezuela had experienced an unprecedented escalation of violence; this had been an attempt to set a colour revolution in motion. He recalled the situation in Ukraine.
The Minister of Science and Technology, Gabriela Jiménez, explained that there had been around 30 million attacks per minute on the electronic voting system. A powerful economic and financial force must have been behind such massive attacks, not only on the content but also on the functionality of the system. Maduro announced the creation of a national commission for cyber security (telesur of 12 August 2024). •
1 La Jornada of 2 August 2024; https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/08/02/politica/un-201cexceso201d-anuncio-de-blinken-sobre-ganador-en-venezuela-afirma-amlo-4007
2 https://amerika21.de/2024/08/270764/lula-brasilien-venezuela
Further source: https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/08/06/mundo/investigan-a-opositores-en-venezuela-por-instigar-a-la-insurreccion-2849
(picture telesur.net-tv)
Integration of Latin America to stop foreign interference
by Ana María Aragonés, Mexico
The Venezuelan elections on 28 July, which featured ten contenders, were actually played out between two camps. On the one side, the right-wing opposition in the person of Edmundo González and on the other, the current chavismo in the figure of President Nicolás Maduro. The international powers – of course the United States in the person of Anthony Blinken and the European Union with Josep Borrell and then unanimously the 27 countries of the European Union – doubted the good results presented by Maduro, i.e. the data from the Venezuelan electoral authority CNE, which gave him 51.2 per cent and González 44.2 per cent, and they gave more credibility to those presented by the opposition.
In this context, a proposal by Presidents Gustavo Petro (Colombia), Lula da Silva (Brazil) and Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Mexico) was presented, calling for calm and waiting for the results to be shown. They asked Maduro to present these as quickly as possible so that the uncertainty did not lead to violent escalations.
And while the United States and the European Union categorically rejected the figures presented by Maduro in the first few days, they suddenly seem to have backed down and become cautious, declaring: “As long as the results are not available, they should not be anticipated”. This cautious stance has of course attracted attention and can be explained on the one hand by the commitment of the three presidents, who are calling for sanity and calm. On the other hand, Nicolás Maduro has indicated that, since the United States wants oil, he is willing to pass on the oil bonuses to the so-called BRICS.
In my view, the active participation and unity of the presidents of the three largest countries on the continent, the clarity of their message to resolve disputes through dialogue and diplomacy, is a sensible and intelligent proposal. It points to an incipient Latin American integration, with the clear objective of avoiding interference by Western powers – the United States and its unconditional ally, the European Union – and proposing Latin American solutions among Latin Americans.
It cannot be forgotten that the United States has been and is a real threat to any country in the region that attempts to reverse the structures of dependence and subordination, and that its most powerful weapon has been precisely to prevent, by all means and at any cost, a project of regional unity and integration from consolidating. The second element that seems to have been able to moderate the comments of these characters, whose positions could escalate into a “soft coup”, was the call for the BRICS and the mention of oil. Venezuela is one of the world’s leading oil producers, an important enough point for the United States, which considers Latin America’s resources to be a matter of “national security”, to reconsider its initial, categorical position.
But, as Ingrid Urgelles points out, what is happening in Venezuela goes beyond this and a set of alternative processes are taking place in the Global South that seek to reverse the geopolitical conditions dominated by the West, whose hegemony is in crisis.
On the one hand, economic dynamics are shifting towards the Eurasian region, with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s New Silk Road taking centre stage, which the United States seeks to obstruct and slow down by all means. On the other hand, there is a search for multipolarity and the need to change the terms of international trade. This shows the importance of de-dollarisation, in which the BRICS with their new development bank based in Shanghai seem to be involved.
On the other hand, a policy of active non-alignment is beginning to be discussed. This means that a foreign policy of subordination to the United States is rejected in favour of a proactive, effectively non-aligned policy that puts national sovereignty first.
In this context, the threats made by María Corina Machado [the Venezuelan opposition leader] warning President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that a huge wave of 3, 4, 5 million Venezuelan emigrants would be unleashed if Nicolás Maduro clings to power, only confirms the complicity of this right wing with the unilateral and illegal sanctions applied by the United States. They have caused an enormous economic tragedy, dramatically affecting the population that has been forced to migrate.
Therefore, despite the wishes of Joe Biden (dixit), the changes that are emerging in the international order will not be led by Washington.
Source: La jornada of 10 August 2024;
https://www.jornada.com.mx/noticia/2024/08/10/opinion/integracion-para-detener-injerencias-extranjeras-7359
(Translation from the Spanish by Current Concerns)