Amid the many surprising news that 2024 threw up, usually bad, one was positive. On July 28, Nicolás Maduro committed monumental fraud in the presidential elections and the entire world realized it, saw it live and was able to verify the evidence that demonstrated it by its own means. The good news was not the fraud, of course, which was not even news but something predictable; The good news was that 70 percent of the Venezuelan population voted for change, and that the opposition led by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González managed to anticipate Maduro’s tricks to demonstrate it. The dictator was left naked, without a story – something so important today – to the point that not even his allies in the region could accompany him in the lie. The opposition had dealt a mortal blow to the credibility of the regime, it had defeated it on its own ground, playing by its own rules, and it would not be able to recover from that humiliation. Weapons would keep him in the presidency, but no one could dissemble or resort to euphemisms. Maduro would go down in history as a tyrant.
Since then, as the date arrived for the new president to take office, uncertainty and fear set in in Venezuela. The regime was quick to repress the population and arbitrarily imprison anyone who showed signs of nonconformity, including teenagers, and even a private complaint in a WhatsApp message became a smoking gun. But the fear that Maduro spread was a symptom or reflection of his own fears. Having lost popular support, his permanence in power began to depend on a single pillar of the State: the Army. The bad news was that even the troops had voted for Edmundo González. Senior military officials may have been involved in the structure of the State and in all kinds of economic activities that aligned their interests with those of Maduro, but the scrutiny of the vote showed that the prerogatives did not trickle down with the same generosity to the barracks.
The panic increased because Edmundo González, who was forced into exile in Spain, said that he would return tomorrow, January 10, to claim his victory, and that he will also do so escorted by nine former Latin American presidents. The urgency with which Maduro blocked access to Caracas to seize all vehicles entering the capital is proof that he fears he will keep his promise. Additional evidence of his doubts are the 1,200 counterintelligence forces that he has deployed in the streets, and the scoundrel kidnapping, in broad daylight, in front of his own children, of Edmundo González’s son-in-law, which he will surely use as a cruel weapon. of blackmail.
We are facing a scenario where the key is fear: citizens know that they are facing a group of criminals that has the repressive power of the paramilitary groups that Chávez created, the infamous ‘colectivos’, and the regime is afraid of what What could happen if Venezuelans mobilize massively to reclaim the power they won at the polls. The hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who marched to the Miraflores palace on April 11, 2002 were crucial for the overthrow of Hugo Chávez, and the massive mobilization of his supporters, who 48 hours later marched again on Miraflores, the Fuerte Tiuna and the television channels, was equally decisive for the reestablishment of the overthrown leader. The civilian population in the streets, blocking the entrance to a government palace, can unseat a leader who has lost legitimacy in the eyes of his people. The Ecuadorian Lucio Gutiérrez was removed from the Carondelet palace in 2005 by a mass fed up with his corruption and authoritarianism; Perón was freed from prison by the thousands of followers who stood in front of the Casa Rosada in 1945; and Eloy Alfaro, another Ecuadorian president, was not only overthrown and lynched at the beginning of the 20th century, but his body was burned in what became known as the Barbara Bonfire. We’ll see what happens in Venezuela. If the script set by Machado and González is fulfilled, tomorrow there will be a situation similar to that of 2002: there will be two presidents in Caracas aspiring to cross the presidential sash over their shoulders, one recognized and the other fraudulent, one democratic and the other authoritarian. , one enabled by the people and the other clinging to office through kidnapping, thuggery and foul play. The situation is so anomalous that making a prediction of what will happen is impossible. Both sectors have strengths and weaknesses. Maduro, he has just demonstrated, has the weapons and repressive apparatus of the State. Edmundo, for his part, has the support of the international community and political legitimacy. They are two different forms of power, one hard and the other soft, that will collide when the two sides claim their place in the institutions.
At a time like this, of maximum tension, all eyes will be on the Army’s reaction. The game begins today, when the first of the two marches called by María Corina Machado begins to beat the regime. If the opponents manage to demonstrate in the same way they did on July 28, in that proportion, demonstrating their immense numerical superiority and their overwhelming preponderance in the political and social scenario of Venezuela, Maduro will have a better chance of dawning on July 11. January in a prison or in exile than in the Miraflores palace. But repeating that feat is not easy, especially in the face of a Government on the defensive, prepared to quell any uprising that puts them in danger. The recent past has left very painful images in the memory of those who came out to protest, which explain the fear and anticipated distrust. The coin is in the air. If fear is overcome and millions of Venezuelans take to the streets, if the international community puts pressure and the army remembers its constitutional commitments – the patriotism that they so proclaim in their anthems – it will fall on the side of Machado and González. If not, democracy will lose the bet and it will be impossible, as in Nicaragua or Cuba, to predict whether a new opportunity will be reserved for Venezuela in the near future.
#Carlos #Granés #Venezuela #crossroads
