AS VENEZUELA announces July 28 as the date for its next presidential election, US President Joe Biden is keeping the pressure on the South American nation by renewing for a further year the “declaration of national emergency” against it.

The declaration says Venezuela “poses an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” First imposed by president Barack Obama, this executive order enables the US to impose an array of sanctions against Venezuela in a drive to achieve “regime change” in the country.

In all, 930 coercive measures that are illegal under international law have been applied against Venezuela amounting to a fully fledged blockade of the country. 

While Venezuela’s mining, banking and food import sectors have all been sanctioned, its oil sector has been the US Treasury Department’s main target in an attempt to starve the country of foreign income. The result has been a drastic fall in output and income since the first sanctions were imposed.

Estimates of yearly losses of state oil revenue vary from $15-$30 billion. The impact on the population in 2017-18 alone has been estimated by authors Mark Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs to have been at least 40,000 deaths. By early 2020 former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas had upped that estimate to over 100,000 deaths. 

The view of current UN Special Rapporteur Dr Alena Douhan is that “overall, in Venezuela, unilateral sanctions have generated food insecurity and affected all other aspects of life, from education to healthcare.” 

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine and its impact on oil and gas supplies has forced Biden to row back in October 2023 from Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela by lifting temporarily sanctions primarily affecting Venezuela’s oil, gas and mining sectors.

But the suspension of sanctions came with a warning that the US is prepared to reimpose them at any time, should the Venezuelan government “fail to follow through on their commitments.”

These are agreements made in Barbados following dialogue between the Maduro government and the opposition “Unitary Platform.” The Barbados Agreement set out conditions for the 2024 presidential elections. Rejecting any “political violence” against Venezuela or its state institutions, it laid out 12 points concerning the presidential vote.

These included holding the election in the latter half of 2024, updating the electoral registry, promoting a balanced media coverage and publicly recognising the results. Both sides agreed to invite international observers from organisations including the African Union, the European Union and the Carter Centre.

The agreement also dealt with electoral guarantees for candidates, including allowing all candidates being allowed to stand provided they do not break the law or the Venezuelan constitution. Any person currently barred from standing could appeal to the Supreme Court for a case review.

This included far-right politician Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the opposition’s primary to be the Unitary Platform’s presidential candidate. 

She is banned from holding political office for 15 years for, among other things, supporting US sanctions and the US-backed “interim government” of Juan Guaido.

When in January 2024 the Supreme Court ratified her ban on standing for office (while lifting it on others), the US immediately revoked the licence for Venezuelan state-owned gold mining firm Minerven to engage in international gold trading. It further threatened to reimpose the oil and gas sector sanctions if the Maduro government did not fulfil what the US said were its commitments.  

Machado’s response was to defiantly declare: “There will be no elections without me!” But it is unclear whether the right-wing opposition parties will rally round her to get her on the ballot or choose an entirely different candidate to support. 

The US’s backing of Machado and the international mainstream media’s enthusiasm for her does not translate into a platform of broad support for her within the opposition spectrum.

Nor can her victory in the opposition primary be relied on. It was a murky affair for several reasons. 

Unlike other primaries, it was not run by the CNE but by Machado’s own non-governmental organisation Sumate, which has received funding from the US National Endowment for Democracy agency.

Manual voting only was used, there was no auditing of results and all election materials were destroyed after polling stations closed. The reported turnout of 2.3 million with 90 per cent of votes cast for Machado was widely queried, including by a number of opposition leaders and activists.

Moreover, several potential presidential candidates from across the opposition spectrum didn’t participate in the primary.

Even if they had, the opposition’s standing is poor. A recent survey by Hinterlaces, a reliable and well-known pollster, has revealed that only 9 per cent of Venezuelans support the opposition parties, while 90 per cent of Venezuelans think the opposition is very divided and in need of new leadership.

The Venezuelan government, meanwhile, will continue with a wide-ranging dialogue process that saw over 40 political parties and organisations contribute ideas and proposals for the presidential election process.

What the right-wing opposition’s next step will be is unclear. Machado may continue to reject the possibility of supporting another anti-government candidate to challenge Maduro on the ballot, insisting she is the only person to do so. If this view is followed through, it might lead to her again supporting electoral abstention and a resumption of a violent strategy for regime change.

As for the US, whose heavy hand is ever-present throughout this process, so far it has not declared the election fraudulent months in advance of it being run, as it did with the last presidential election in 2018. But if Maduro wins, which looks likely, declaring the election illegitimate is still an option for the US, no matter what conditions it is run under.

The task for the labour and solidarity movements in this country in the forthcoming months will be to rebut the negative propaganda and misinformation and campaign for the total lifting of sanctions on Venezuela.