Nicolás Maduro is playing hardball.
His hand-picked National Electoral Commission, which awarded him victory in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential race, has refused to release tally sheets, which most observers believe would show he was soundly defeated.
He has initiated a wave of arrests. Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzáles Urrutia is in hiding, as is María Corina Machado, the dynamic leader who galvanized the electoral effort. Maduro has blown off condemnation from leaders in the Western Hemisphere and beyond, meanwhile, promising to use an “iron fist” to crush his opponents.
Why is he taking such a tough line and ignoring all the pressure to recognize the democratic process and step down? The short answer is because he can.
One key factor is oil. Although Venezuela produces less than a third of what it did before the decades of mismanagement begun under Maduro’s charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chavez, the oil sector still provides enough money to keep the armed forces and the security apparatus functional, even as the larger economy sputters
In addition, the regime has benefited from its close ties to Cuba. The island nation, though submerged in its own economic crisis, has long made available to Venezuela training and assistance from its superb intelligence service, itself fostered by the Soviet Union in its heyday. As a result, Maduro is able to keep a close eye on potential threats from within, especially from the armed forces.
His regime, although riddled with corruption and socialist in name only, still retains a sense of itself as a “revolutionary” force, standing up to American imperialism and its supporters within Venezuela. It also can take heart from the fact that it enjoys the support of Russia and China, with which it has long cultivated economic, security and political ties. Although there are limits to what they can do for Maduro in a crunch, he doubtless finds it reassuring to know that he still has some powerful friends.
Diplomatic efforts are being undertaken, led by Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, to persuade Maduro to release the tally sheets — a step that would likely reveal his fraud and force him to negotiate a transition. While we cannot say for sure what is going on behind the scenes, there are no visible signs of progress thus far.
One possible next step would be for the U.S. to fully reinstate sanctions against Venezuela’s oil sector, which were lifted in an effort to promote an electoral path out of the crisis. But the Biden administration is not likely to be interested in roiling international oil markets in the middle of the U.S. presidential campaign. And proponents of such a step have no good answer to the response that sanctions had failed to bring down the regime when they were in effect.
So what is left for the opposition?
Its strength lies in that it reflects the will of the Venezuelan people, who are desperate for change. However, we are already seeing signs that the Latin states trying to address the crisis are looking to persuade the opposition to accept some token solution in the name of civic peace. Brazil has already suggested that the answer may lie in having a second electoral process conducted at some time in the future, a proposal which the opposition has rejected. In reality, their only option is to remain out in the streets, demanding respect for the ballot.
This would have to take place over an extended period, probably months, in the face of ever-increasing pressure from the National Guard, Venezuela’s paramilitary police force; from SEBIN, the “Bolivarian Intelligence Service” that is the regime’s Gestapo-equivalent; and from its “colectivos,” organized groups of street-level thugs. Such a strategy would entail accepting the prospect of significant casualties (there have been some already), no matter how peacefully protests are conducted. Venezuelans well remember when anti-Chavez protesters were fired upon from an overpass in downtown Caracas in 2002, leading to 19 deaths, the “Puente Llaguno massacre.”
But without well-organized protest, the risk exists that popular frustration may simply lead to a social explosion, as was the case in the 1989 Caracazo (the blow against Caracas), a week-long outbreak of rioting and looting triggered by the imposition of economic austerity measures. As many as 3,000 persons may have been killed before it was suppressed.
Of course, there is no guarantee that sustained peaceful protests would be successful. But if maintained at sufficient scale and for sufficient length, they could exhaust the security forces, leaving Maduro with no choice except to deploy the army, and hope that its rank and file would obey.
Simon Bolivar, whose name has been invoked by the regime ever since Hugo Chavez first took office in 1999, famously said: “Cursed be the soldier who aims his weapon against the people.”
How the army would react upon orders to do so is the great unknown. But it will be up to the Venezuelan people to decide if they are prepared to take the fateful step of putting them to the test.
Richard M. Sanders is Senior Fellow, Western Hemisphere at the Center for the National Interest. He is a former member of the Senior Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State, where he served in assignments throughout Latin America, including at the U.S. embassy in Caracas, from 2002 to 2005.