Long gone is the light-hearted, almost avuncular, version of Nicolás Maduro who attempted to charm the world in the lead-up to Venezuela’s presidential election. The man who took the stage at Miraflores Palace last week was exhausted — and angry.
How severely he miscalculated the opposition’s power was on full display for the world. Protests against what many say is Maduro’s fraudulent win swept the capital of Caracas, even as the government had started arresting Venezuelans in the fiercest crackdown of his 11-year rule. His rival, the ever-popular María Corina Machado, and her party had published a more detailed accounting of the voting results than the government ever had in the past, showing their candidate, Edmundo González, won by a landslide. Pressure to share election results mounted from even Maduro’s closest allies abroad. The prospect of sanctions relief disappeared, and so did the little legitimacy he had left.
So, in his first international press conference in almost two years, Maduro yelled. He screamed. He waved his hands. He clenched his fists.
“Touch your heart, correspondents, if you have any heart left,” he started, almost slurring. Over the next half hour, his speech intensified and his voice grew louder, until he was screaming. “Do not insist on your agenda of bringing a war to Venezuela, as you did with Afghanistan. You are responsible for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in Libya, and for death, the international media.”
If the anger wasn’t enough of a giveaway, his eyes were. His claim to have slept like a baby after the election was far from believable.
With frustration erupting even from longtime strongholds of Chavismo, Venezuela’s brand of socialism, Maduro knew he had lost control.
Perhaps in an attempt to regain it, Venezuela’s president has now ratcheted up the ire against the opposition and its supporters like never before. Maduro has said Machado and González “should be behind bars.” He has already arrested 2,000 protesters and promised to send them to maximum-security prisons for 30 years, the same sentence doled out to murderers. At least 14 media workers have been deported, according to the country’s journalists union.
“Maduro has miscalculated — badly,” said Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “In order to remain in power, Maduro has moved the country in the direction of Nicaragua, which is a total police state.”
Taking repression to an even greater extreme in Venezuela risks the future of its people and its economic recovery. Though Maduro has managed to pull the economy out of its worst days of hyperinflation and scarcity, the current political situation could push companies and investors who recently struck oil deals with Venezuela to hit pause, at least for now. And with the prospect of sanctions relief almost certainly gone, that activity is crucial to increasing oil output in order to ramp up exports and cash in dollars for revenues.
Berg said Maduro must have now realised that “regime strength and regime survivability are two separate concepts — one can lack the former and have the latter.”
Venezuela’s electoral authority ratified Maduro’s win on Friday, part of his government’s bid to use regime-controlled institutions to legitimise its position against claims of fraud. They say he won 51.95 percent of the vote, while the opposition has published more than 80 percent of voting tabulations that show González received nearly 70 percent. The country’s top lawmaker Jorge Rodríguez said the oppositions’ tabulations were false and don’t meet legal standards.
“It’s one thing when you imagine your vote stolen. It was a possibility. But seeing the robbery in front of our eyes is another complete different thing,” said María Gomez, 64, a secretary from the low-income neighborhood of Petare, which has long supported Chavismo.
Gomez said she hopes that the international community could help Maduro “come back to his senses.”
The reality is, however, that the US has already exhausted its options when it comes to Maduro. He has survived years of sanctions on the oil industry, the heart of Venezuela’s economy. It promised to drop sanctions in exchange for fair and free elections. But if that agreement was meant to nudge Venezuela toward democracy, it’s clearly now accomplished the opposite.
For now, the days in Caracas have resumed to normalcy after protests earlier in the week, with messengers delivering packages and papers from office to office. Grocery stores and pharmacies have reopened. Restaurants and bars too, though some are operating with limited hours.
But at night, the streets are empty and ominous. People stay locked up at home, fearful of the groups of men — some in uniform, others dressed as civilians — who patrol the streets.
Despite the government’s attempts to frighten opposition supporters, thousands attended a call to gather Saturday morning along a main avenue of east Caracas.
“The spell is over,” said Jose Marquez, 55, a retired economist who lives with his siblings in Petare. “People have realized they have been deceived in front of their eyes. I only see radicalisation coming.”
Machado, who just two days before said she was in hiding, fearing for her life, surprised and encouraged her supporters by showing up in the demonstration. Just before that, the government attempted to seize a truck meant to carry the speakers for the demonstration and briefly detained yet another opposition leader.
What comes next is mostly up to Maduro. Both Machado and González are in danger of imminent arrest. González did not show up for a hearing at the electoral court on Friday claiming juridical and political reasons, nor did he attend Saturday’s demonstration. The night before, both issued a statement and a video from an unknown location.
Maduro has insisted on Friday that demonstrations earlier last week were not peaceful, pointing out to cases of public buildings set on fire, including schools. He alleged that the opposition was planning an attack with grenades just two miles away from Saturday’s march. Both serve as reasonable excuses to keep security forces out on the street.
One thing is clear: After being rejected by his own people, and once again, the international community, Maduro is ready to do things differently.
In his address to the international media Wednesday, Maduro said he wanted to continue the ideals laid out by his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez. “But if North American imperialism and criminals fascists force us, my pulse will not tremble to call the people to a new revolution, with other characteristics,” he warned.
Though “Maduro still has a way to go if he wants to build complete control of Venezuelan society à la Ortega in Nicaragua,” said Americas Program’s Berg, “that may well be where he is heading.”
– TIMES/BLOOMBERG
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