The message Thursday night was blunt: The United States recognized Venezuela’s opposition presidential candidate as the winner of Sunday’s election and dismissed a statement by electoral authorities that the country’s autocrat, President Nicolás Maduro, had won.
Venezuelan authorities have not presented any data to support their claim of victory, Joe Biden’s administration said, while his rival, Edmundo Gonzalez, has recounts from most voting machines that his team said showed he had won by a “largest margin of victory in history.” The New York Times has not verified those counts.
The U.S. statement added to international condemnation of a vote riddled with irregularities and was an attempt to warn Maduro that the world would not accept a farce. Even some of Latin America’s leftist political leaders have expressed serious doubts about his victory.
But will that matter?
There is widespread skepticism that foreign pressure will affect Maduro’s power, at least in the short term.
Protests in support of Gonzalez have now dissipated, and security forces and pro-government groups have responded with force. At least 17 people have been killed, including a soldier. About 750 people have been arrested in the demonstrations, according to the country’s attorney general.
At the same time, half a dozen members of the opposition campaign team are hiding in an embassy in Caracas, the capital, trying to avoid arrest. Gonzalez’s chief defender, popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, said in a recent op-ed that she was writing “from a safe place, I fear for my life.” Her public appearances since the election have been brief.
Authorities have threatened to arrest her and Gonzalez. On Friday, her team reported that her office had been broken into and vandalized. The two opposition leaders have called for a march in Caracas on Saturday. But many Venezuelans know they could be arrested, or even killed, and it is unclear how large the gathering will be.
In response to criticism from foreign governments over Maduro’s victory, the Venezuelan leader has limited himself to ordering some diplomatic missions to leave the country.
His political movement — first under Hugo Chávez and, for the past 11 years, under Maduro — has ruled Venezuela for a quarter-century, consolidating power and seizing control of all branches of government and most media outlets.
The United States has sought for years to oust Maduro, calling his 2018 re-election a sham, imposing harsh sanctions on the country’s oil industry and, along with dozens of other countries, backing the head of the country’s legislature, Juan Guaidó, in 2019, who declared himself the nation’s interim president. None of that succeeded in ousting Maduro.
Now, life in the repressive country could get even worse.
Francisco Rodriguez, a Venezuelan economist, said that after Sunday’s election, Venezuela was likely facing “the beginning of a full-blown dictatorship” in which even the remnants of democracy would disappear.
In Venezuela, many people believe that Maduro allowed the election to go ahead, after leading opponents were disqualified, jailed or exiled, in an effort to gain some domestic and foreign legitimacy, and as part of a strategy to get the United States to lift its sanctions.
People close to him said he believed he could win.
But as exit polls on Sunday began to show Maduro losing, and by a lot, the goal changed. By late afternoon, his goal was to stay in power, no matter the price, analysts said. And that appears to be exactly what Maduro did.
Hours after polls closed, the country’s electoral authority announced that with 80 percent of voting machines in, Maduro had received 51 percent of the votes, and Gonzalez 44 percent. But it did not make the vote count public.
The opposition campaign, however, collected the tally sheets printed by each voting machine. On Thursday, the campaign said it had collected the tally sheets from 81 percent of the machines and that its recount indicated Gonzalez had won 67 percent of the vote.
And the opposition has already published the results on the Internet.
But the reality, Rodriguez said, is that the cost of losing was too high for Maduro to even consider: Leaving power could land him in jail.
The president has been indicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges and is being investigated by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
But committing electoral fraud in such a seemingly blatant manner does not cost him that much.
The United States had already imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, helping to strangle the economy. Maduro was already isolated from much of the world. He was already losing support at home, even among low-income people who had supported Chavez.
And Maduro already knew that he would have the financial support of Russia, China and Iran, who were quick to congratulate him after his re-election.
The Biden administration is likely to be wary of new economic sanctions, in part because they could further hurt Venezuela’s economy and prompt more emigration to the United States, already a political headache for Democrats ahead of the U.S. election in November.
The United States has also lost much international credibility in its ability to rally countries behind efforts to oust Maduro, following its failed backing of Guaidó. Some international political actors viewed Guaidó’s bid for the presidency as undemocratic.
Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, regional powers led by leftist political leaders who have been relatively friendly to the Venezuelan leader, could exert some influence over Maduro.
All three have taken a softer approach than the United States, expressing doubts about the election rather than saying outright that Maduro has lost, perhaps believing that by avoiding antagonizing him they can persuade him to finally release the results of the vote.
Or, in the longer term, they could strike some kind of power-sharing deal with the opposition, as has happened in other authoritarian countries.
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador warned the Biden administration and other governments this week at a new conference not to make decisions about the elections until the final vote count is available.
“Keep your hands and noses out,” he said.
On Thursday, the three Latin American governments issued a statement calling on electoral authorities to make public the election results broken down by electoral college, and offering their “willingness to support efforts for dialogue” between the ruling party and the opposition.
But they refrained from criticizing Maduro.
Ricardo Zúniga, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the White House National Security Council during the Obama administration, said Brazil and Colombia were Venezuela’s “last connections to the democratic world.”
They are also neighbors of Venezuela.
“So they have a lot of influence,” he said. “If they choose to use it.”
If Maduro fails to produce evidence that he won, the most effective strategy would be to strongly denounce him and refuse to recognize his victory, Zuniga said. That would weaken him inside Venezuela, and could make him more willing to negotiate, he added.
But Brazil and Colombia may avoid that route, as well as join any additional sanctions that Washington might impose, because they fear it would close diplomatic channels with Venezuela.
The government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil has become a key ally in the international community’s rapprochement with Venezuela, according to a State Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly on diplomatic matters.
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The Brazilian leader has developed a close relationship with Biden since the U.S. president helped him fend off threats to democracy during Brazil’s 2022 election, and Lula’s frustration with Maduro has grown in recent months, the official said.
This week, his government came to the aid of six members of the González-Machado campaign, who have taken refuge in the Argentine embassy in Caracas to avoid arrest. When Maduro ordered Argentine diplomats to leave this week, Brazil took over the embassy building, effectively offering protection to Maduro’s enemies. It was a bold move by Brazil.
There are signs, however, that Lula may ultimately stop short of taking drastic measures against Maduro, such as breaking off relations.
In a recent interview with Brazilian television network Globo, he characterized the election dispute as an everyday disagreement that could be resolved in Venezuelan courts, even though the country’s top court is run by Maduro allies. “It’s normal that there is tension,” the Brazilian president said.
A senior Brazilian diplomat, who was also not authorized to discuss the situation, said his government is not prepared to do much more than it has already done, which is to call for a full recount of votes. Further chaos inside Venezuela could spill over into Brazil, the diplomat said. And more than half a million Venezuelan migrants already live in Brazil.
The diplomat said Lula was being pragmatic because his country is interested in maintaining Venezuela’s stability.
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