Who Are the Venezuelan Opposition? Leonardo Flores & Alejandro Velasco Debate Election Aftermath

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

We turn now to Venezuela, where the United States is reportedly escalating its efforts to remove President Nicolás Maduro following July’s contested election, where both Maduro and his main rivals claimed victory. Last week, Maduro, who was declared the winner by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, appealed to the Supreme Court to verify the results after opposition leaders Edmundo González and María Corina Machado released thousands of vote tally sheets to back their claims of victory. González failed to appear before the Venezuelan Supreme Court, saying he feared arrest, while the high court said Saturday the opposition has not yet submitted evidence to support its allegations. Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro spoke from Caracas Friday.

PRESIDENT NICOLÁS MADURO: [translated] The absence of Edmundo González Urrutia before the highest court of the country is scandalous, as was his absence on June 20th for signing of the agreement to recognize the election before the CNE, National Election Council. He does not recognize the CNE as an institution. He does not recognize the Supreme Court. Who does he recognize? The government of the United States? So the statement of the three political parties who push this extreme-right candidate is scandalous. They have nothing. They have nothing.

AMY GOODMAN: Dueling protests in support of Maduro and the opposition have taken place in Caracas and other parts of Venezuela. Over the weekend, Venezuela’s opposition leader, María Corina Machado, called for global mass protests August 17th.

Meanwhile, the White House Monday denied reports by The Wall Street Journal that the Biden administration had offered Maduro amnesty in exchange for his resignation. This is White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierrre.

PRESS SECRETARY KARINE JEAN–PIERRE: It’s been two weeks after the elections in Venezuela. It is abundantly clear — right? — to the majority of Venezuelan people, the United States and growing number of countries, as you just listed, that Edmundo won the most votes in the 20 — in the July 28th election, presidential election. And Maduro must recognize it.

AMY GOODMAN: International rights groups have denounced reports of a violent crackdown against demonstrators. At least 25 people have died in protests since the July 28th election. There have been some 2,000 reported arrests. Meanwhile, both González and Machado have gone into hiding.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. In Washington, D.C., Leonardo Flores is a Venezuelan political analyst, activist, founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network. And Alejandro Velasco is an associate professor at New York University, where he’s an historian of modern Latin America. His new piece for The Nation is headlined “What’s Next for the Left in Venezuela?” Professor Velasco is former executive editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, joining us from Newport, Rhode Island.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let’s start with you, Alejandro Velasco. Your assessment of what’s taking place now and these Wall Street Journal reports of the United States offering amnesty for Maduro if he were to leave?

ALEJANDRO VELASCO: Yeah, it’s a curious development. On the one hand, it’s very hard to take it seriously or to assume that Maduro is taking it seriously. Of course, on the one hand, it’s important for the United States, if indeed this happened, even if it’s through back channels, to signal to Maduro and to the upper echelons of the Maduro government that it’s willing to put significant stake on the table in order to execute a transition into a different type of government. On the other hand, what we’ve seen, both historically and recently, is that claims of amnesty or offers of amnesty don’t really have significant legal weight. We’ve seen this in Guatemala, we’ve seen this in Argentina, we’ve seen this in Chile, where, you know, negotiated transitions that rely on a potential amnesty for would-be human rights violators actually are reverted after the political conditions change.

So, you know, my sense is that even if it is the case, it’s not actually something that is seriously being considered in Caracas. On the other hand, what does seem to be the case is that it does signal to — by the United States that it is, like I said before, willing to put something on the table, and perhaps it’s a gesture for the Maduro government to take the process or take the idea of negotiations towards a transition somewhat seriously.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Alejandro Velasco, what do you make of the Supreme Court’s statement that the opposition has failed to produce evidence to the court of its allegations of election fraud?

ALEJANDRO VELASCO: I mean, the reality is that right now we’re in a “he said, she said” scenario. Obviously, the opposition has released what it claims is a vast cache of electoral returns at the precinct level which suggests a victory by González by a two-to-one margin. On the other hand, we have not received from the National Electoral Council — and this, you know, we talked last week on the show, and the real question at the time was, you know: What will the National Electoral Council do relative to its obligations under Venezuelan law to release that data? And to the extent that it continues to not release the data for public scrutiny, what we have is a — in Spanish, we say ”dimes y diretes” — right? — a kind of going back and forth.

So, you know, I think it is true to cast doubts on the claims of the opposition alone that it won by this margin, because we can’t actually verify it. But part of the reason why we can’t do that — in fact, a large part of the reason why we can’t do that is because we don’t have the data coming from the National Electoral Council. So, you know, I think it’s healthy to have significant skepticism of the claims by the opposition. Certainly, the statements by the U.S. White House spokesperson are, in some ways, really difficult to accept at face value. That’s why many countries in Latin America have said, “Well, we are not going to recognize González as the winner. What we need is to push the National Electoral Council to do its job.” So, that’s — you know, that’s very much up in the air.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I want to put the same question to Leonardo Flores of the Venezuela Solidarity Network. The issue — at least three progressive governments in the region — Mexico, Colombia and Brazil — have called on the Maduro administration and the election officials in Venezuela to produce actual vote counts and tallies, not just the total tallies, but also the precinct-by-precinct tallies. What’s your sense of why that hasn’t happened? And also, the issue of whether the Venezuelan opposition, by posting stuff on — or their returns on an internet site is the same thing as producing evidence of valid counts to the court?

LEONARDO FLORES: Well, thank you, Juan.

Let me just first say that what we’re seeing in Venezuela is a more sophisticated, more violent and better planned version of Stop the Steal. The electoral authorities declared a winner. The loser, at the end of the election, without any credible evidence, is claiming fraud. They unleashed violence. Then they threatened more violence. And I think that should really alarm progressives in the United States, because it’s not only a similar playbook to what we saw here in 2020, but it’s a similar playbook to what happened in Brazil when Lula beat Bolsonaro, and in 2019 in Bolivia when there was false claims of fraud against Evo Morales that led to the coup in Bolivia.

When we see the positions by Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, I think what we’re seeing, really, is them trying to take a middle position between the few countries in Latin America that have already declared González to be the winner, like Argentina, like Peru, the other countries throughout the Americas that have already accepted the results by the CNE. And so, they’re playing this middle position in order to try to brunt the response by the United States.

But we also see that the United States is already going back on its promises. President Biden, a few days after the election, he spoke with President Lula, and afterwards he tweeted that there was a pledge to coordinate any actions with these three countries of Mexico, Brazil and Colombia, and those three countries haven’t recognized the winner, but the United States already has. So I think that’s very troubling.

And we have to understand this, these claims of fraud, in the context not just of the ongoing economic war against Venezuela, which has seen sanctions kill at least 40,000 Venezuelans only in the first year alone, but in the context of a hybrid war against Venezuela, where we saw this attempted drone assassination attempt in 2018, a failed mercenary invasion in 2020, numerous failed calls for military insurrections and calls from the opposition for foreign intervention. So we can’t delink these attacks against Venezuela with these claims of fraud by the opposition.

AMY GOODMAN: Leonardo Flores, I want to ask this question of both Alejandro and you. You’re both Venezuelan. The opposition to Maduro, where it falls? Do you consider it — let’s start with you, Leonardo — to be pro-U.S., neocolonialist, all of it, or do you see a lot of opposition within the left?

LEONARDO FLORES: So, well, first of all, let’s note that there were 10 candidates in these elections. Nine of them were in the opposition. The opposition is divided, and they always have been. And there’s a spectrum. I wouldn’t call any of those nine opposition candidates part of the left, but I would certainly call Edmundo González and María Corina Machado part of the far right, and their history shows that.

In terms of the left in Venezuela, there is a so-called faction called, what they call themselves, dissident Chavistas, which is mostly made up of academics and former government ministers, but they don’t have an electoral base. They have no power on the streets. And they really have little to no influence within Venezuela itself.

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s put that question to Alejandro Velasco, as well. Divisions in the left, those who support Maduro and those who don’t?

ALEJANDRO VELASCO: I mean, on the one hand, the landscape that we just heard is certainly accurate. I think it’s incomplete, though. What we’ve seen, whether we put the focus on sanctions, whether we put the focus on policies on the part of the Maduro government to specifically target popular sectors by way of security operations, etc., I think it is hard to claim that on the ground there isn’t significant amount of critique against the Maduro government from sectors that previously supported even Maduro, but certainly, before, Chávez. Some of these have left Venezuela in massive amounts of numbers over the last 10 years.

I think the Chavismo internally and supporters abroad do themselves a disservice by not recognizing massive amounts of discontent. We can talk and debate about the reasons for that discontent. Absolutely the sanctions are part of that, of that landscape. But to not move the needle and recognize that there is significant discontent on the ground at popular levels against the Maduro government is a recipe for basically placing all of what we understand to be the project of the Bolivarian Revolution that Hugo Chávez started and conflating it with Maduro staying in power. That is a tremendous risk that the left internationally runs, if the left is going to try to have a continuing, viable political project in Venezuela that’s decoupled or delinked from Maduro in power.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I’d like to go back to Leonardo Flores on this issue of the comparison you made to Trump and the 2020 Stop the Steal movement, allegedly. There’s no doubt that the United States has systematically attempted for the last 25 years to remove the Bolivarian Revolution from power in Venezuela. But at the same time, it’s not quite the same thing, the comparison to the 2020 election, because at least Trump — Trump was arguing against actual election results, state by state, city by city, in his attempts to overturn that election, those election results. But here, there have been no published results of the election, precinct by precinct. So it’s not quite the same thing, is it?

LEONARDO FLORES: It’s not quite the same, but it is very similar. And it’s not just Trump, of course. It’s also Bolsonaro. You know, there are ties between Edmundo González, María Corina Machado and the far right throughout the hemisphere.

And yeah, you’re right, we haven’t seen the precinct-by-precinct results yet. The CNE has issued two bulletins showing the generalized results. By law, though, they have 30 days to present those results. We’re not anywhere close to those 30 days being up; we’re about two weeks away. And already the CNE has turned over all of its data, including evidence of a massive cyberattack that occurred in Venezuela on July 28th, Election Day, and has continued since then, a cyberattack, which we have evidence for from firms even in the United States, which have recognized a tenfold increase in denial-of-service attacks against Venezuelan websites, including the PSUV party.

AMY GOODMAN: We have to leave it there. I want to thank our two Venezuelan guests, Leonardo Flores, political analyst, activist, founding member of Venezuela Solidarity Network, and NYU associate professor Alejandro Velasco. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. Thanks so much for joining us.