After the fiasco of the Venezuelan legislative elections of May 25, which were boycotted by the opposition and had a minimal citizen participation, President Nicolás Maduro is likely to stop making elections with a minimum claim of democratic normality.
So few people voted, and the regime was so badly stopped, that now Maduro says he wants to change the Constitution and celebrate future elections under an electoral system of “communal circuits.” Of course, this would guarantee, as in Cuba, automatic victories. The opposition leader María Corina Machado told me in an interview on May 26 that the legislative elections were a “monumental defeat” for Maduro, because an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans complied with the call of the opposition to boycotting the vote.
“It was the lowest vote in the history of Venezuela,” Machado told me. “It was nobody.”
Maduro’s regime said the electoral participation was 43%, but Machado told me it was only 12%. Everything indicates that Machado estimate is closer to reality. The pollster meganisalysis placed the participation in 14%. The magazine “The Economist” reported that “the electoral participation was unfortunate. The electoral schools were deserted.”
Machado told me that the opposition has about 10,000 photos and videos taken that day in the voting centers, which show that they were practically empty. As expected, Maduro was awarded a overwhelming victory. According to the National Electoral Council, controlled by the Government, Maduro’s party obtained 83% of the parliamentary votes, and 23 of the 24 governments.
In the presidential elections of July 28 of last year, in which Machado and other outstanding opposition figures were proscribed, Maduro was awarded the victory despite the fact that the acts of the vote showed that the opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, had won with 67% of the votes.
When I asked Machado why Maduro still takes the work of making elections, since almost no one takes seriously the Venezuelan electoral processes, he replied that the regime did not expect such little people to vote.
“They didn’t think people were going to rebel like this,” Machado told me. “They thought they could force public employees as in other opportunities, and create the illusion that 30% or 40% of the population voted.”
Until now, Maduro wanted to appear a certain democratic normality so as not to lose recognition from Brazil and other countries. But after the poor influx to the polls on May 25, he is now saying that the Constitution will change to reform the electoral system.
“Venezuela needs” to create “a new electoral system,” Maduro said on the afternoon of May 25. He added that “the electoral system of the communal circuits must be established as a new permanent consultation system.” He gave no more details, but seemed to propose a government control system.
I would not be surprised that Maduro continues with this plan, because his electoral farce is so crude that not even the left -handed democratic governments can accept them. And the fact that Maduro does not even achieve that Venezuelan public employees go to the polls makes it look weak in their own country.
In addition, Maduro needs to increase his political control because public discontent will increase. The Venezuelan economy is falling into minced. It is forecast that economic growth will fall between 1.5% and 4% this year, due to low world oil prices and the United States’s decision to suspend Chevron license to export oil from Venezuela.
Annual inflation already exceeds 100%, and the official minimum salary, without bonds, is only US $ 1.50 per month. To worsen things for Maduro, Russia and China are no longer giving loans as before, and the United States is closing its doors to the immigration of Venezuelans.
In summary, the legislative elections were a pyrrhic victory for Maduro. Now he will have more legislators, and more governors, but he will be even more isolated from the rest of the world, and his own people, in an increasingly worse economic context for him.
–Glossado and edited–
© The new Herald. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
