Venezuela celebrates legislative and regional elections this Sunday in the midst of a new wave of arrests of critical and activist voices, included after the presidential elections on July 28, in which Nicolás Maduro awarded the victory despite an avalanche of fraud complaints, the Government now presents as an achievement this call, trying to sell it as evidence of its evidence of its democratic vocation. However, all processes electoral processes in Venezuela since 2015 have been designed to a greater or lesser extent to favor the permanence of Chavismo in power.
The recurring maneuvers of the regime have been, according to the usual complaints of the opposition and international organizations, even after having won; reforms to electoral laws to promote overrepresentation of the most voted lists; the technical block to hinder the registration of applications with opportunities to win; the systematic exclusion of the vote abroad; Voting control through social benefits, as well as the use of state resources and all the power for the campaign.
For this Sunday, President Maduro has offered prizes to the 10 circuits of each State in which his coalition takes more votes. The day after the election, the president promised, the execution of the project that the community desires will begin. This seeks Chavismo to stimulate the vote against the call to abstention from the majority sector of the opposition, which remains firm in the defense of the results of the presidential ones of July 28. To clarify the complex Venezuelan opposition map, the sensitivity that leads on the other hand, there are leaders such as aspiring to a seat in the assembly, Manuel Rosales, who seeks re -election as governor in Zulia, the state of Maracaibo, or who do participate.
From 2015 to the Constituent
The electoral guarantees have been systematically fractured in Venezuela, for at least a decade. They are a clear history that Chavismo, which until then represented at least half of Venezuelans, is not willing to give control of power. The opposition won the majority of the seats and from the Supreme Court of Justice the parliamentary majority was blocked until the legislative was emptied with a declaration of contempt, first, and then with the call to a National Constituent Assembly as a counterpower.
This was the first sign that Chavismo was losing a majority in the country. In the thread of the Venezuelan political conflict that finally led the international community to turn on the alarms about the authoritarian drift in Venezuela. The majority of democracies in the world did not know the authority of this instance and began to impose the first sanctions against officials and government entities as punishment for the violations of rights committed. The opposition came from having just a third of deputies in the previous period, when he tried to reverse the impacts that the decision had to be abstained in the legislative cycle from 2005 to 2010, just the period in which Hugo Chávez managed to amend the Constitution to re -elect indefinitely.
The 2017 Constituent was convened directly by Maduro. He governed for three years and never drafted a new Constitution. Integrated in its entirety by Chavismo militants, it operated as a 585 members under the direction of the today Vice President of the Rodríguez, initially, and after Diosdado Cabello. Under this body, laws such as the Law against Hate were approved, used to persecute dissent.
Governorates and abstention
That same conflict 2017, when there were more than three months of protests against Maduro, the elections for governors who had a year of delay were held. Chavismo controlled 20 of the 23 and the light of the 2015 results could lose a good part of them.
The opposition came divided into these elections, in which the government uses the tactic to relocate voting centers at the last minute to complicate the exercise of vote in circuits historically controlled by its adversaries. The antichavistas forces denounced that at least 250 electoral schools were moved to more difficult access sites. The opposition conquered five governorates, but in the end it lost one, that of Zulia, which Juan Pablo Guanipa had won, who refused to submit to the authority of the National Constituent Assembly as a requirement for its exercise. He was dismissed from the position and elections were summoned again in which he won a Chavismo candidate. Two months later the municipal ones marked by the disappointment of what happened with Guanipa and the call for abstention of the opposition majority that could only win 27 of the 335 mayors were summoned.
The breakdown of 2018 and Guaidó
In 2018 they played and the opposition prepared to make primaries to arrive together with a strong candidate or candidate. But the same constituent created as Maduro convened them in advance. They were on May 20, 2018. —Of the lowest in a presidential election – after having blocked the opposition block card, of illegalizing the largest parties of the first justice and popular will opposition and disableing the main leaders such as Henrique Capriles Radonski, Leopoldo López (who was in household prison then) and María Corina Machado. For these reasons, the opposition called abstention. A dissident of Chavismo appeared as a rival in a short campaign and uphill, after signing a democratic guarantees agreement that later denounced that they were not fulfilled. These elections were not recognized by the international community and thus the gap began to open in Maduro’s legitimacy.
After 2019 and in the middle of an even harder siege sanctions that included oil activity, parliamentary elections were held in which the opposition also decided to refrain. The allegation was the commitment to the strategy embodied by Guaidó, supported by the idea of with the votes obtained in 2015, the opposition Parliament was the only instance of legitimate power in Venezuela democratically chosen. Despite the intentions, a totally Chavista National Assembly again legislated from the Capitol of Caracas. The international community questioned the lack of transparency and conditions of these elections. The only dissident voice in that Parliament ended up being the Communist Party of Venezuela, former ally of Chavismo.
The return of the observation
In 2021 the latest regional elections of governors and mayors the pulse of negotiations between Chavismo and the opposition had some result. They were the first with international observation of the like the European Union since 2006 and were organized by a new body of rectors in which for the first time two of its five members were related to the opposition, postulated by civil society. Today, and Roberto Picón, imprisoned for having been for being the electoral technical advisor of the opposition coalition and then released. The Government made public commitments such as eliminating the figure of “Los Protores”, officials appointed from the Presidency to boycott the management of opponents chosen in some states and municipalities.
The improvement in the conditions of participation did not avoid the fissures in the opposition for the applications of some positions, which were lost by divisions between parties. The elections summoned 41% of the electorate and became an opponent removal that took four governments and almost a third of the mayorships. In these elections there was the so -called Barinas case, when the opposition managed to dominate the state considered cradle and bastion of Chavismo, until then governed only by members of the family of Hugo Chávez.
For this territory llanero to the south of the country, the leader of Popular Will Freddy Superlano was postulated, arrested and incommunicado since after the elections last July. The Supreme, however, disabled him after winning a narrow margin to Argenis Chávez, brother of the former president. Between struggles and negotiations, Chavismo agreed
Its substitutes. They accepted to compete against Sergio Garrido who managed to defeat the government candidate again and this Sunday aspires to repeat in office.
No conditions, despite the agreements
A situation similar to what happened with Garrido, happened with the second attempt of the opposition to replace María Corina Machado, chosen with 92% of the votes in primary and vetoed by the Supreme.
With this new disqualification began the journey of pitfalls to the July 28 elections, specified after having signed the Barbados agreements, in turn cooked to the fire of international negotiations with the United States and under the sponsorship of Norway. They were commitments for “free elections”, but to a large extent they were alone on paper. In the previous months of the elections, a string of arrests from political leaders occurred. A new electoral council totally ally to Maduro was responsible for organizing them. Even under these conditions, the presence of the international observation of the European Union was achieved – explained in advance – and the Carter Center and also a high participation sustained by a desire for political change of 80% of Venezuelans, according to the probes of that time.
After what happened with the results of July 28, questioned by the delegations of observers and that have not yet been officially published publicly, this Sunday’s elections are made in one of the worst scenarios in recent years. More than 900 political prisoners, an increase in repression against dissent with the arrest of Juan Pablo Guanipa at times of voting, greater opacity in the processes of part of the referee and a demobilization of most Venezuelans, divided between refraining as Machado has called Radonski and Rosales.
