Venezuela’s Presidential "Elections"
A Primer on the Presidential Contest this Sunday
Note: This post isn’t about economics or finance, but I am Venezuelan and it’s important to me. If you aren’t interested, please feel free to ignore it.
There’s an election for Venezuela’s presidency tomorrow, but it isn’t an ordinary election. It’s an “election” under dictatorship. To understand what’s at stake, international readers will need some brief background.
A crucial fact about Venezuelan politics is that before the country became authoritarian in 2015, Hugo Chavez’s political movement was an electoral machine. In the fifteen years between 1998 and 2014, they won:
Presidential elections in ‘98, ‘00, ‘06, ‘12, ‘13
Two referendums and an election to rewrite the constitution in ‘99
A referendum to remove Chavez from power in ‘04
Legislative elections in ‘00, ‘05, ‘10
State governors elections in ‘00, ‘04, ‘08, ‘12
Municipal elections in ‘04, ‘08, and ‘13
They only ever lost a single contest in this period, and narrowly: a referendum to reform the constitution in ‘07. Their electoral success was simple.
One part was economic – oil prices were extremely high in the commodity super-cycle of the 2000s and early 2010s, and Chavez juiced the economy with exorbitant subsidies, generous handouts and lavish spending, paid for by oil revenue but also external borrowing, central bank money printing, and underinvestment in infrastructure and the oil industry. The other part was political and institutional – Chavez was a charismatic populist, and he gradually co-opted the country’s democratic institutions from 1999 onwards, starting with the judiciary, the media, the electoral authority, the intelligence services and the military. This gave the government large advantages with campaign finance, favorable media coverage, clientelist policies and voter intimidation. Over these fifteen years, the country slid from a democratic regime to a “competitive authoritarian” one.
In 2015, things changed. Oil prices had crashed the year prior, inflation was soaring, external interest payments were crowding out essential imports and the economy was in a deep recession. Chavismo sleepwalked into legislative elections despite the economic headwinds and bad polling, and were unexpectedly swept by the political opposition. Their defeat was so large that the opposition won a supermajority in congress, giving them broad powers to trigger presidential elections to challenge Chavez’s successor, Nicolas Maduro.
But after over a decade of massive corruption and human rights abuses, losing power was too risky, so Chavismo used their crony supreme court to annul all laws the opposition congress passed, block early presidential elections and eventually created a parallel legislature that usurped all its powers.
And so democracy died.
The presidential, congressional, state and municipal “elections” that followed were all shams. Beyond the advantages in campaign finance, media coverage, vote buying and voter intimidation, opposition candidates were barred from running, there was ballot stuffing of various kinds and in some cases, official results were simply made up. It was impossible to win elections in hyperinflation and the largest economic collapse in the history of the Americas, so Chavismo didn’t really try.
Now, there are presidential “elections” on Sunday, and for the first time in years, there is hope for change. “Anything can happen in Venezuela’s presidential election” reads one editorial. “A unified opposition has a real chance to restore democracy on July 28 [...]” reads another. The opposition is united behind its new leader, Maria Corina Machado, who has been barred from running but has put her weight behind Edmundo Gonzalez, a retired diplomat, after her previous stand-in candidate was also barred from running. Maria Corina has substantial grassroots support and has been campaigning across the country for months, despite all the obstacles the regime has imposed, from arresting her staff to canceling her hotel bookings to blocking roads. Her candidate has a large lead in the polls.
But the election will almost certainly be stolen.
The potential costs of giving up power for Maduro and the governing clique are extremely high – life in prison at the Hague or a Venezuelan jail or even a Ceaușescu ending – and the benefits are remote and uncertain, if any. Unless something major changes, Chavismo will always prefer to remain in complete control of the country and the world’s largest oil reserves, even under U.S. sanctions and international isolation, than take on the existential risks of a power transition. As far as I know, there haven't been attempts to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement, broad amnesties or other transitional justice agreements, which seem like necessary pre-conditions to conceding electoral defeat. So the election will probably be rigged, just like every other in the past decade.
Is the vote worth it, then? Emphatically yes. It will make the government steal yet another six-year presidential term, which is embarrassing for a political movement that used to pride itself over winning elections, and will force leaders from around the world to condemn the result, even those on the left like Lula from Brazil and Petro from Colombia.
But more importantly, it’s a “roll of the dice.”
The main non-violent way to topple authoritarian regimes is to “fracture” the governing coalition, to “crack” the equilibrium that keeps them in power, to generate intra-factional infighting and dissent that “makes an opening” for change of one form or another. And the main way to do that is with large destabilizing events, like presidential elections that need to be flagrantly stolen. The ball is deflated and the pitch is angled 45 degrees uphill, but this is still a shot on goal, and the country is absolutely right to take it.
What comes next isn’t hard to imagine. After the government steals the vote (as I expect it will), there will be intense international condemnation, particularly from the US, Europe and Latin American governments. There will be massive street protests, which will be ignored at first and then violently repressed with official or paramilitary forces. The government will bet it blows over in a few weeks as the news cycle moves on and world turns to the next crisis, and the opposition will hope that someone powerful in the regime says “enough is enough” and calls for Maduro to go. It will be another “roll of the dice.”
May luck be on Venezuela’s side.