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Home » Maduro on the ropes?

Maduro on the ropes?

The New Neo Posted on by

Perhaps.

When one studies the history of tyrants and how they are overthrown, a turning point often comes when either the police, the army, and/or the tyrants’ bodyguards desert them and side with the people aligned against them. Is that happening in Venezuela?

There are large protests but that wouldn’t ordinarily be enough to do the trick.

Here’s some background concerning the political role of the military in Venezuela, written prior to the election:

After years of indoctrination and growing political and economic influence, the Venezuelan military and other security forces are an entrenched part of Chavismo, the socialist movement that has been in power for over 25 years. Generals run several ministries and the national oil company, PDVSA; there is no big legal or illegal business in which the formal and informal repressive apparatus doesn’t have a certain sway.

The military has supported the regime’s brutal repression of recent years. At first sight, that makes the institution an obstacle to regime change. But now the military also runs significant risks from protecting the status quo, particularly if the government loses the vote by a large margin despite its manipulation attempts. How its top brass and the lower ranks react to the vote will be key to defining the country’s next political steps.

There are now reports such as this, which indicates a possible wobbling of the military’s support for Maduro:

You can read a lot about the demonstrations here.

However, today we have this, which seems an ominous sign:

…[D]eclaring the military’s backing for Maduro, Defense Minister General Vladimir Padrino denounced the protests, saying on state TV: “There is a coup in progress so President Nicolás Maduro has stepped up to stop it again, and with him the people who elected him president, all the institutions, the Bolivarian armed forces and the democratic institutions.”

“We will defeat the coup,” Padrino said.

The situation is fluid, but unless many of the security forces in Venezuela side with the protesters, I don’t see much hope for the anti-Maduro crowd. If Maduro has the power and is willing to use it, the crowds would have to swell to encompass a much much greater number of people to have any real chance of loosening his grip on power.

Comments

Maduro on the ropes? — 14 Comments

  1. NYT: What Happened to Venezuela’s Democracy?
    Some fisking follows.

    Mr. Maduro’s inner circle became synonymous with corruption, including a scheme in which a businessman, Alex Saab, was accused of making off with hundreds of millions of dollars meant to feed Venezuela’s hungry.
    The shift away from any sort of socialism seemed to be complete.

    Contrary what “The shift away from socialism” implies, corruption has always been a big part of Chavismo. Corruption did not begin with Maduro. Far from it. Diosdado Cabello (translation: Godgiven Hair) has played a leading role from the 1999 beginning of the Chavista regime to the present. One of Chávez’s main themes in the 1998 presidential campaign was to crack down on corruption. Chávez took office in February 1999. By 2000, it was apparent that corruption, in spite of Hugo’s campaign rhetoric, was going great guns. From Rory Carroll’s Comandante chapter 2 Inside Miraflores (Ironically, Julie Turkewitz, the NYT correspondent, cites Rory Carrol’s Comandante. Guess she just skimmed it.):

    His longtime comrade and fellow coup conspirator General Jesús Urdaneta was unhappy. Chávez had appointed his friend, typically blunt and outspoken like people from the western state of Zulia, to head DISIP, the intelligence service. Urdaneta received reports that two of the president’s most important civilian allies, Luis Miquilena, head of the National Assembly, and José Vicente Rangel, the foreign minister, were lining their pockets. Both were veteran political operators who had guided the comandante, a political neophyte, after his release from jail on the hidden strings between state, media, and business interests in the so-called Fourth Republic. Urdaneta complained to Chávez that they were bringing the old, corrupt habits into the fledgling Fifth Republic. According to the general, the president acknowledged the duo’s corruption but said he needed their dark arts to consolidate power. The feud spilled into the Vargas aftermath when security forces were accused of executing looters. Of eight thousand men in the field, only sixty were from DISIP, but Urdaneta found his agency singled out and pilloried—allegedly due to Miquilena and Vicente Rangel pulling their invisible strings. (Years later Miquilena fell out with Chávez and was charged but acquitted of corruption. Vicente Rangel was never charged with any crime.) Chávez barred Urdaneta from speaking to the press. His old friend claimed he had been set up and resigned in protest, the revolution’s first major defection.

    There’s good corruption and there’s bad corruption. Chávez’s takeover in 2002-03 of PDVSA, Venezuela’s golden goose, greatly increased the opportunities for corruption.

    But 25 years later, Mr. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, oversees an authoritarian regime that …censors the media

    In 2007, Chávez did not renew the broadcasting license of RCTV, the leading media opponent of Chávez. Shutting down opposition media is censorship by another name.

    In 2002, a group of dissident military officers and members of the opposition attempted to oust Mr. Chávez in a short-lived coup.

    With some information left out. Chávez ordered the army to fire on peaceful demonstrators. The army refused. Which led to Chávez’s temporarily stepping down. Brian Nelson’s The Silence and the Scorpion: the Coup Against Chavez and the Making of Modern Venezuela is the authoritative source on the coup. Also see Venezuelan blogs from April 2002: Venezuela News & Views, Devil’s Excrement, Caracas Chronicles.

    Shortly after, the managers of the country’s powerful state oil company, led a nationwide strike against the government, paralyzing the economy for months.

    The strike was a response to Chávez’s decision to take over PDVSA. Hugo won, and fired the 20,000 strikers. Unfortunately, the country lost, as Chavista control of PDVSA grievously wounded Venezuela’s goose that laid the golden eggs. Chávez, ever the master politician, later admitted he was trying to provoke PDVSA. As such, it could be said that the strikers fell into his trap.

  2. From what I have read about the military in Chavezuela, a.k.a. Hugoslavia (stealing a name from a deceased country to satirize a now-deceased President), the regime has vetted the generals for years and also compensated them very well with rakeoffs from drug smuggling. The Generals will stand with Maduro. The enlisted men had trouble getting enough to eat. Maybe the enlisted men will not stand with Maduro. At least that is the way things stood five years ago, which is when I stopped closely following Chavezuela, a.k.a Hugoslavia, a.k.a. Venland, a.k.a. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

    (From what I have read of the September 1973 coup in Chile, the lower-level officers took the lead against Allende, such as in the failed June 1973 attempt.)

    The question I have is, where do the lower level officers in the Venezuelan armed forces stand? My guess is that they have previously been vetted for loyalty to the regime. IIRC, the enlisted men are draftees.

    Padrino- no way he would ever go against Maduro. There are some photos of Padrino with Godfather Fidel.

    The Cuban secret police have a strong foothold in Venezuela. As such, I am doubtful the regime will fall. The Cubans have no reluctance to kill. From Turtler’s posts on Maduro:
    https://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/cubas-intelligence-masterstroke-in-venezuela/

    https://www.voanews.com/a/americas_exiled-venezuelan-spy-chiefs-speak-out-about-corruption-cuban-ties/6172418.html

  3. When you see Venezuela, it is a mirror of what is underway in the USA. Our very possible next President, Harris, has never received even one popular vote. Biden “gave” all his Democratic convention delegates, elected in primaries and constituting a majority of convention delegates, to her as a “gift.” So she will be their nominee. From the people? No way. More like Maduro.

  4. Neo: You can read a lot about the demonstrations here.
    From the link:

    This guy, who works for Maduro, took this selfie during the counting of the votes yesterday in Venezuela.

    He forgot that the real results were on the screens. You can see how Maduro lost, by a lot, every state.

    I am pretty sure he won’t make it alive another day. pic.twitter.com/gUX6kyEVhx

    — Ada Lluch ?? (@ada_lluch) July 29, 2024

    From that “another day” link, there is a picture apparently from the election results room (CNE). We see pie graphs from six states: with red (PSUV/Maduro) in the minority in all six. In most, decidedly in the minority.

    Like they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.
    Good find, Neo.

  5. Coming to America if the Dems steal this election again.

    The media plays along with its fake national polls showing the election is close. That’s the setup for the steal. Of course the Dems win CA by a landslide, but its always been a state-by-state election and if the Dems do the same thing this time like they did in 2020 in WI, PA, GA and AZ then look out. Counting for days. Big swings. Stopping the counting.

  6. In the past, both Hezbollah and Russia’s Wagner Group have provided armed support for Maduro. Will they do it again? If so, how will the third (or fourth) Obama administration react? Will they actually support armed foreign intervention in the western hemisphere? Will anybody notice? So many questions.

  7. Re the parallels between Hugoslavia and thr US today–there’s this inversion in play.

    In the US, there is too much lucre at stake for the corruptocrats NOT to rig the election.

    But in Venezuela today, is there too little lucre left for the rigging to sail on and succeed? If so, then the united opposition may yet prevail.

  8. A seeming split by the military this early post-election is more likely to be a feint, a tactic used to bring reluctant or suspected or disloyal senior and junior officers out into the light so they may be eliminated. It sounds like things are destablized, but I’ve come to recognize this house-cleaning of the barracks as part of every post-election process that goes on in Venezuela, since the Kleptocracy / Thugocracy has come into its position of power and consolidated itself. I don’t think Venezuela will topple until people get considerably more desperate, or until there’s a major natural crisis. A whopping great earthquake or massive hurricane will cause a lot of trouble, not that I wish this on them. Unfortunately our foreign intelligence services prefer to meddle in domestic politics, I guess because they’ve largely had their foreign enterprises throttled or exposed. This is what it is going to take though – foreign intervention.

  10. Maria Corina Machado says that the oppo now has tally sheets for 84% of the voting centers. NPR: Venezuela’s Maduro threatens reprisals as disputed election protests become deadly Updated July 30, 20248:19 PM ET Heard on All Things Considered

    CARACAS, Venezuela, and BOGOTÁ, Colombia — For a second straight day Venezuelans poured into the streets to protest what increasingly appears to be a stolen presidential election, but the defense minister pledged to crackdown on dissent and vowed loyalty to authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro.
    Addressing a huge outdoor rally in Caracas, opposition leader María Corina Machado said her movement had obtained 84% of the voter tally sheets from Sunday’s balloting which showed that retired diplomat Edmundo González, had won in a landslide. González, she said, had received more than 7 million votes compared to 3.2 million for Maduro.
    “This is irrefutable proof that we won,” said Machado who was replaced on Sunday’s ballot by González after she was banned from running by the Maduro regime. “We not only won. We destroyed them.”
    On Monday, the National Electoral Council declared that Maduro had won a third term, beating Gonzalez by a 51% to 44% margin. However, the electoral council — which like most government institutions is controlled by the ruling Socialist Party — has declined to release any detailed ballot information to back up its numbers. Pre-election polls as well as election-day quick counts and exit surveys showed González with a huge lead.
    As a result, allegations of fraud are multiplying and Venezuelans as well as foreign governments are calling on Maduro to release the official tally sheets from the more than 30,000 voting machines. Celso Amorim, an envoy for the leftwing government of Brazil, met with Maduro Monday and said the strongman had promised to release official data on the election.
    “He said this would happen in a short period of time, from what I understood,” Amorim told The Financial Times.

  11. MSN from WSJ: Venezuela’s Maduro Moves to Silence Opposition After Disputed Election Story by Kejal Vyas, Ryan Dubé
    Maduro vows “bloodbath” and crackdown.

    CARACAS, Venezuela—Strongman Nicolás Maduro’s regime vowed to crush a burgeoning protest movement against election results that cement his grip on power, amid growing evidence he lost by a wide margin and violent clashes between demonstrators and security forces.
    Authorities had already begun arresting some opposition leaders, while a senior Maduro aide said police should lock up the president’s main challenger, 74-year-old retired diplomat Edmundo González, and María Corina Machado, a top opposition figure. Riot police on motorcycles and armored vehicles fired tear gas on crowds of opposition protesters Tuesday, as a coalition of four human-rights groups reported they had documented at least 11 deaths during countrywide street clashes.

    Worry spread of more violence as Maduro—who promised a “bloodbath” if he lost the election—called on his supporters to rally around the presidential palace, a day after a host of angry protesters marched there and fought with government backers.

    The Oppo has compiled a publicly accessible database of the tally sheets from the voting stations.

    The opposition said it had collected data from 73% of the country’s voting stations on its own and compiled it in a publicly accessible database on Tuesday. Using their national identification, Venezuelans can sign in and review a scanned tally sheet from their voting station showing how many votes went to each candidate. The opposition says the database shows that their candidate, González, received 6.3 million votes to 2.8 million for Maduro.

    “I found mine, the proof is there,” said Celina Ramirez, an opposition supporter who said she was able to log into the website to locate the tally sheet from her east Caracas voting center, which she said showed González receiving the lion’s share of votes. “There’s no way the regime can fool everyone with their tricks,” she added, carrying a Venezuelan flag as she walked with her family to join an opposition rally.

    Hope springs eternal:

    The opposition hopes the release of the database will increase pressure on Maduro’s autocratic regime to make public the detailed results of the election.

    “Democratically elected” Mexican President AMLO shows his real opinion of democracy.

    On Tuesday, Mexico’s left-wing president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, criticized other nations for pressuring Venezuela to address the widespread accusations of fraud.

    “Why do they have to meddle in the affairs of other countries?” López Obrador said Tuesday in a press conference.

    AMLO tells us it’s “meddling” to want to have election results released.

    Here’s a howler:

    “With fascism there’s no dialogue. With fascism there’s no forgiveness,” Jorge Rodríguez, a senior bMaduro aide, told supporters at the regime-controlled congress, who responded with a standing ovation.

  12. This is at least closer to being the right answer. I just wish it came at a more opportune moment given Biden/Harris appeasement of the PSUV dictatorship. But this is nothing particularly new. Does anyone remember Capriles, democratically elected lawful President of Venezuela? Not really. I barely do. Because Chavismo is above the law, and the only ways to effectively fight it are also either above or below the law. And even then it has powerful foreign support that will shed blood on its behalf.

    My best wishes to the Venezuelans; they will need all of it and more.

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