AS/COA Insider: Eric Farnsworth on Venezuela's Election and What Comes Next
AS/COA Insider: Eric Farnsworth on Venezuela's Election and What Comes Next
AS/COA’s vice president explains that, despite the Maduro regime’s electoral fraud, Venezuelan voters turned out to "take a risk for democracy."
Despite intimidation and vote-rigging tactics, Venezuelans turned out in droves to participate in the July 28 presidential elections. Still, amid global concerns about the lack of transparency in the results, Nicolás Maduro claimed victory, affirming the electoral agency’s result that gave him 51 percent of the vote. But the opposition’s candidate, Edmundo González, rejected the results, given exit polls indicating he held a strong advantage.
“Where do we go from here? Do the Venezuelan people accept this declaration by the regime?” said Eric Farnsworth, AS/COA vice president. Farnsworth covers the international reaction to the vote, what it might mean for the U.S. elections, and the resilience of Venezuelan voters.
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AS/COA Online: Over the course of several elections, the Maduro government has fixed the odds in its favor, and the July 28 vote is looking like it was a similar case. What made the 2024 elections different?
Eric Farnsworth: What made them different this time was hope. Maria Corina Machado, who was not on the ballot because she had been arbitrarily disqualified by the regime, gave that to the people of Venezuela, both in the country and to the very large diaspora outside the country: hope that change was actually possible.
Despite that, Maduro and the regime tried to do everything to make that vision a non-reality. And in fact, they ended up doing that. They took steps to complicate the voting process. They printed ballots that were intentionally confusing. They used intimidation and other techniques designed to suppress the opposition vote. They muzzled the press before the election in terms of what it could cover about the opposition campaign.
In some ways, the tactics were the same ones always used by the Maduro regime, but what made it really different this time was hope and the support of the international community. The people of Venezuela overwhelmingly voted in favor of opposition candidate Edmundo González. He has declared that he won the most votes and therefore is the next president of Venezuela. So now we have two people claiming victory. It's a scenario that continues to evolve very rapidly.
AS/COA Online: You mentioned the international community. What have the reactions been globally?
Farnsworth: Of course, you've had some countries come out and say that they are fully supporting Maduro—such as Cuba, China, Russia, and Bolivia; countries that you would anticipate would do that.
Then, you had countries like Argentina, which strongly supported González, calling Maduro a dictator, and saying it's time for him to go. As for the United States, Secretary of State Tony Blinken spoke during his trip in Japan, expressing concerns about the vote.
A number of countries have tried to take that middle course, which is to say: “Look, we have real concerns about the vote. We don't think that the vote that was announced by the CNE, or the electoral commission, reflects the reality or the will of the people, and we’re looking for additional clarification.”
And then you've had some countries, which really just haven't taken much of a stand at all. I think that's interesting—particularly those countries within Latin America itself.
It's an evolving situation; I think that will continue to develop.
AS/COA covers 2024's elections in the Americas, from presidential to municipal votes.
