On 21 November, Venezuela headed to the polls. Over 70,000 candidates from 111 political parties competed for 3,082 posts, encompassing governors, mayors, state legislators and councillors. The process underwent 16 different audits and took place under the watchful eyes of over 300 international electoral observers from 55 countries, including official missions from the UN, European Union, Carter Centre (US) and the Latin American Council on Electoral Experts (CEELA). Following the failure of a four-year electoral boycott and coup-mongering efforts led by self-declared ‘interim president’ Juan Guaido, the hardline US-backed opposition returned to the ballot box. Turnout was 42%, significantly higher than the 30% turnout for 2020’s parliamentary elections.
The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its Great Patriotic Pole (GPPSB) coalition made gains. The PSUV was the only party to hold internal primary elections, signalling a return to its grassroots base. 52% of GPPSB candidates were women and 43% were young people; 90% of candidates had never held office before, representing a renewal of regional leadership. The PSUV and its allies appear to have increased their governorships to 20 of 23 states and have won 305 out of 335 mayors, including in the capital Caracas. The Chavista vote was not completely unified: the ‘New Revolutionary Alternative’ (APR) ran on the Communist Party ticket, gaining a small fraction of the vote. The opposition vote was divided between the hardline Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), and the more moderate Democratic Alliance (DA) which split from the US-backed electoral boycott of the 2020 parliamentary elections. MUD claimed two states and 59 mayors; the DA won one state and 37 mayors.
The US pre-emptively rejected the results as a pretext for continuing its illegal, unilateral sanctions. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared them ‘neither free nor fair’ and insisted that the US would ‘continue to exert pressure’ on the Maduro government. But the European Union’s observer mission, while alleging some ‘structural deficiencies’ in the electoral process, nonetheless said it complied with international electoral law. Its preliminary report referenced the National Electoral Council (CNE) as the ‘most balanced electoral institution Venezuela has had in the last 20 years’. The head of the EU mission, Isabel Santos, remarked that the CNE ‘carried out the preparations in an efficient manner as initially planned, following dialogue and participation of all political factors of the country’. As William Castillo, Venezuela’s vice-minister of anti-blockade policy, pointed out, the EU report is ‘a slap in the face’ to the US ‘because [Santos] has not said there was fraud here, nor an illegitimate election’. Both the Russian observers’ mission and CEELA reported that the elections were held in compliance with all international standards. Even the mainstream media, such as The Guardian and the BBC in Britain, never ones to miss an opportunity to undermine the Venezuelan government’s legitimacy, could not find anything damning to say – and so barely reported the results at all.
Guaido and his faction of hard-right US-backed opposition are more isolated than ever. As Venezuela’s Ministry of Foreign Relations stated: ‘the big loser is US imperialism and its allies in Venezuela who suffered a resounding defeat for turning their backs on the people, inciting the application of illegal coercive measures against the entire population and surrendering to foreign interests…The Venezuelan people, as a sign of their unyielding courage and resistance, took to the streets… to vote for peace, for reunion and for recovering the stability that US interventionism has tried to steal from them.’
Sam McGill
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 285, December 2021/January 2022
