VENEZUELA’S election this weekend takes place in a context dominated by Venezuela’s robust economic recovery, which, considering the calamitous situation the country found itself as late as the end of 2020, the 1 per cent rate of inflation June this year and an expected rate of growth for 2024 of between 5 to 8 per cent, is near miraculous. 

This is despite the application of 930 unilateral coercive measures (aka “sanctions”) that caused havoc in the period 2015-23. A confirmation of this recovery is the return of nearly a million Venezuelans who were persuaded with false promises and as part of psychological campaign of fear to leave the country during the worst moments of the effects of the aggressive and brutal US sanctions against this South American nation.

Additionally, the high and enthusiastic levels of mass mobilisation of pro-Maduro forces contrasts sharply with the rather weak rallies of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, supported and literally handled by extreme right-wing politician, Maria Corina Machado, with people being bussed around the cities where they have been held.

They have even resorted to publicising their rallies with photos of a past rally in 2012 — when the opposition candidate was Henrique Capriles — which they had used already in 2019. And, despite the “lies, damned lies and statistics,” the Gonzalez election campaign has not managed to take off, thoroughly contradicting the disinformation spread by the corporate media that Gonzalez is leading in the polls, which has no other purpose than to lend some credence to the extreme right-wing claims of a “rigged” election.

It is widely known that Venezuela’s elections are the most audited and the most observed electoral system in the world. It is fraud-proof and former US president Jimmy Carter labelled it the best electoral system in the world.

The reason for the lack of popularity for the opposition stems from several hard objective facts. On top of the country’s economic recovery is the fragmentation of the, hitherto united, opposition into nine candidacies, while Chavismo has one, Nicolas Maduro. 

The performance of president Maduro’s administration is indeed impressive. The economy is expected to grow between 5 to 8 per cent for the year 2024 and inflation has come down to single digits, being 1 per cent in June this year; more than 40,000 loans to female entrepreneurs have been issued and over 220,000 women’s committees have been created to boost the role of women in Venezuela’s participatory democracy; and subsidised boxes with food and other basic necessities reach nearly eight million families whose contents are 97 per cent domestically produced.

Furthermore, there has been a small stream (but a stream, nonetheless) of opposition politicians publicly declaring support for President Maduro in the coming election. This involves members of the National Assembly, mayors and councillors of several important cities and, more significantly, Carlos Prosperi, former candidate of the opposition primaries for the opposition party, Accion Democratica.

His main reason was his rejection of the extreme right wing around Machado’s message of intolerance and hatred, the misuse and misappropriation of the country’s assets (such as Citgo and Monomeros) and the corruption this has led to among the extreme right-wing leadership, which he labelled “illicit enrichment.”

None of this has, of course, being reported in the mainstream corporate media — no wonder they get away with blatantly lying about the polls. Nevertheless, given all of the above, how can, one of the nine candidates of the fragmented opposition lead the polls? It’s sheer fake news. 

No wonder the main message of Gonzalez’s campaign is all manner of threats of unleashing violence if the National Electoral Council were to declare Maduro the winner. The threats have been uttered quite vociferously, principally by Machado herself.

She has repeatedly with an aggressive and intimidating tone: “The government of president Maduro will only leave power when faced with the credible, imminent and severe of the use of force.”

This explains why Gonzalez refused to participate in a special meeting of all 10 presidential candidates to sign an agreement to accept the results, which he also refused to sign. Knowing they are really trailing in the polls because of their very unpopular government plan, they have no intention to recognise the results, as they have done for 25 years, because they know they cannot win.

Not signing implies that they are likely to — again — cry “election fraud,” with the not very implicit threat of unleashing violence on the day. And, predictably, the world corporate media are parroting their false claims (with the Guardian, as always, being one of the worst). 

Machado has played a central role in all illegal and violent attempts to overthrow the democratically elected government of Venezuela: the six-month waves of violence in 2014 and 2017; support for Juan Gauido’s “interim presidency”; the illegal seizing of Venezuela assets abroad (including 31 tons of gold in the Bank of England); fervently calling for and supporting all US brutal sanctions (930 of them) against Venezuela itself that led to the unnecessary death of tens of thousands and the misery of millions of innocent Venezuelans; the short-lived coup d’etat in 2002 against president Hugo Chavez and the failed coup d’etat against President Maduro in 2019; and just about every other destabilising and violent endeavour to overthrow the legitimate government of Venezuela. 

Although the electoral campaign behind Gonzalez scurrilously sought to hide their real government plans, they were discovered after sustained efforts. They are a planning to dismantle and reverse almost every aspect of post-Chavez Venezuela. The 85-page plan’s title is Venezuela: Land of Grace (October 2023 ) and, peculiarly, was available only in English. 

The dominant objective of the plan is the privatisation of just about everything under the sun in Venezuela: the oil and gas industries; all state enterprises and public assets; using the financial resources obtained with the privatisation programme to pay the country’s external debt; the privatisation of education; the abolition of all financial payments of the private sector to protect workers (pension contributions, holidays, maternal leave, etc); and the abolition of the existing labour law to maximise the “flexibility” of the labour market; the privatisation of the pension system; the adoption of insurance-based healthcare and abolition of the current free health system; and, last but not least, the dismantling of the people’s militia and the adoption of a “hemispheric geopolitics,” which means subordination to and collaboration with the Organisation of American States and the Southern Command or maybe even much worse than that. 

It makes perfect sense. Venezuela’s oligarchy for decades, enriched themselves by siphoning off substantial portions of the nation’s main source of revenue: the oil industry.

Thus their calculation is based on the following: for them to maintain power, were they to succeed in July 2024, they would require the maximum level of privatisation of the national economy by mediating between the Venezuelan state and the multinational companies that would purchase the assets. Such valuable stakes in the national economy by foreign entrepreneurs would guarantee solid support from very powerful transnational bodies, behind whom there is normally the heavy military apparatus of the US — which in the case of Latin America, means Southcom.

This explains the secrecy of their plans and the fact they were written in English. The world’s corporate media totally understands this, hence their parroting Venezuela’s extreme right-wing cries of “election fraud.” Thus, the stakes are high indeed. 

We need to counteract the media lies about Venezuela and if you have not done it yet, join the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign and help us to tell the truth about the election system in Venezuela, to reject and condemn opposition violence and threats of violence, to demand respect for the results issued by Venezuela’s electoral authority, the National Electoral Council, and, above all, to demand the will of the people of Venezuela is respected.

Francisco Dominguez is national secretary of Venezuela Solidarity Campaign.