Five years after a re-election that was already contested, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared himself the winner of the July 28 election, without making public the vote count. On the other side, the opposition, supported by many democratic countries, claims victory for its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, with 67% of the vote.
Javier Corrales, professor of political science at Amherst College (Massachusetts) and author of two reference works on the subject (Autocracy rising And Dragon in The Tropics) explains to L’Express how this “semi-autocratic” regime drifted towards a complete autocracy, and is surprised by the complacency it was able to benefit from within the European left. Lucid, the academic had, as early as 2013, warned in the journal Foreign Policy that Maduro inherited “one of the most dysfunctional economies in the Americas.” The future has largely proven him right. Interview.
L’Express: As after his contested victory in the 2018 presidential election, despite diplomatic and opposition pressure, Nicolas Maduro seems unshakeable. How did he lock down power?
Javier Corrales: When Chavez died, Maduro inherited a tailor-made institutional apparatus. Starting with an electorally dominant party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), fundamentally loyal to its leader, and controlling all branches of the state: from the Electoral Council to the Supreme Court, including the national oil company. The PSUV, which controlled Parliament until 2015, was therefore able to pass all sorts of laws favorable to Maduro. Even when the opposition gained the upper hand in Parliament, Maduro was able to count on the Supreme Court to block the laws passed, and on a parallel constituent assembly, composed entirely of Chavistas, which emptied Parliament of its power. But Maduro also brought innovations.
That’s to say ?
Shortly after Chavez’s death, the PSUV began to lose popularity in the face of opposition. In such a scenario, a leader has two options: to try to compete or to repress. Maduro chose the latter. This is where Venezuela’s semi-autocratic regime began to drift toward full autocracy, through the remodeling of traditional organs of power and the creation of coercive parallel institutions that ensured Maduro would no longer have to worry about competition. And he secured their loyalty by offering a form of compensation: the army acquired commercial functions, local political councils became food distribution networks, even criminal groups began to occupy positions within the state apparatus. Maduro’s regime is the equivalent of a permanent match in which the referees are bought.
Immediately after the election results, Maduro received support from the Chinese, Russian and Iranian governments… Can they have an impact on his continued stay in power?
This has been the case for several years! Maduro has remained in power not only because of his ability to control the arbiters and coercive arms of the state, but also because of a large collection of transnational allies. Cuba has provided significant intelligence services, Russia has provided considerable military and financial aid, and Iran has collaborated extensively with Venezuela to develop schemes to evade sanctions, particularly on oil. Turkey, for its part, has become involved in the smuggling of drugs and mineral products (gold, metals).
In addition, it should be noted that Venezuela is one of the few countries in Latin America where Drug Enforcement Administration American support does not operate. Since Chavez, the regime has therefore allowed transnational criminal organizations to operate without having to worry about U.S. involvement. That said, while Maduro’s allies were probably a factor in his continued leadership and authoritarian turn, they are certainly not the cause. Just as their current support is unlikely to be a determining factor in his future decisions.
Can the opposition compete with the system you describe?
The opposition is far from having been defeated by this election. On the contrary, in a context of democratic decline, I see it as one of the most impressive examples of a movement capable of asserting itself in the face of authoritarianism: the Maduro regime has built a veritable wall of obstacles to weaken competition, by promoting what could be called “fake” opposition candidates (to scatter its electorate) and by creating rules to discourage competition and increase abstentionism.
“By preferring repression to competition, Maduro killed Chavismo”
Not to mention intimidation and even threats (if you vote “wrongly”, you will no longer be entitled to certain state services) to push citizens to vote for the regime in power. Despite this, opposition candidates, like Maria Corina Machado, have defied legal and financial obstacles to serve the opposition’s cause. And it has paid off: a large number of Venezuelans have rallied to the candidacy of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia at the last minute. They have gone further by developing an ingenious plan to have witnesses present at the polling stations, scan the results into secure online databases on election night, work with computer programmers to secure the data and thus provide proof of their victory.
True, but Maduro still occupies the presidential office…
Yes. But it is weakened and things are not going to get better. By preferring repression to competition, Maduro has killed Chavismo. To borrow from the marketing register: refusal of competition means no updating of the brand (no need, since there is no adversary to surpass). Thus, the regime has been operating for more than a decade with the same leader, the same rhetoric, almost the same product. It therefore suffers the same effects as any brand that places itself outside the competition: loss of relevance for voters in the face of market developments, erosion of its image, etc.
Maduro’s true face, that of a tyrant, has been completely unmasked. He has his back to the wall. His only option to cling to power is to repress even harder.
Does Venezuela have a chance of following the model of democracies like Colombia or Ecuador?
I am optimistic. During the third democratic wave, from the 1970s to the 1990s, countries like Spain, Portugal, Chile and Argentina experienced remarkable transformations. It often took a serious economic and authoritarian crisis, an experience in which the rule of law gave way to arbitrariness and anarchy, to convince political actors that they had to turn to a system of rules that held leaders accountable, that is, democracy. This is what is happening in Venezuela right now.
In the past, the Chavista regime has received support from European left-wing leaders such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn. In France, several left-wing parties called for an audit of the vote in a statement not signed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Insoumise or the Communist Party…
Chavez built his reputation as a man of the left (and his popularity) on the defense of distributionism and anti-imperialism. But from the beginning, this went hand in hand with violations of pluralism and human rights. The negative aspects have therefore always been flagrant. A political ideal never justifies flouting the rule of law and respect for pluralism.
By the way, most of the principles that the left supports have been actively violated in Venezuela for years. The Maduro regime has incredibly capitalist ties to imperial powers, exploits workers, is closely linked to organized mafias… Just as it claims to be anti-American while maintaining very lucrative relationships with American oil companies. Not to mention that it is becoming increasingly socially conservative, repressing reproductive and LGBT rights in particular.
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