Venezuela’s Post-Election Stand off Prompts Fears of a ‘Blood bath’

By Ambassador Patrick Duddy

Patrick Duddy is a senior advisor for global affairs at Duke University. During a long diplomatic career, he served in eight countries in Latin America and as the deputy assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere. From 2007 to 2010 he was the U.S. ambassador to Venezuela.

OPINION — Venezuelans went to the polls on Sunday to elect a new president or re-elect long-time strongman, Nicolas Maduro. Early on Monday morning, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced that Maduro had won. An announcement that was immediately rejected by the opposition, which had organized an army of election observers who were present in virtually every voting station in the country.

Independent exit polling had reported overwhelming support for the opposition’s presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.  The few official tallies initially released by voting stations early Sunday evening all pointed to a landslide victory for the opposition’s presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

The CNE, on the other hand, asserted that Maduro had won with 51.2% of the vote to 44% for Gonzalez with with 80% percent of the total vote counted but their assertion was completely unsupported by any hard data.

The CNE’s announcement was also greeted with skepticism by many Latin American governments and the European Union. Many expressly refused to accept the results and insisted that the process of counting the votes had to be transparent and the individual tally sheets had to be made public.

The Maduro regime characterized their publicly expressed concerns as interventionist and expelled the diplomatic missions from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Peru and Uruguay.


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On Monday, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, whom the Venezuelan regime banned from running after she won the opposition’s primary in late 2023, said that she had copies of most of the official tally sheets, the actas, and said they proved that the opposition had won.

By Wednesday, the opposition had posted more than 70% of the tally sheets on-line establishing that Gonzalez, a stand-in candidate for Machado, had, in fact, won with nearly 70% of the vote.  

During the first 48 hours after the CNC announcement, the United States, which no longer has diplomatic personnel in Caracas, expressed grave concern, called for transparency and for the vote tally sheets to be made public.

The Carter Center, which had been invited to observe the election by Maduro, did not immediately publish their report on the election. On Wednesday all of that changed. 

The Carter Center published a devastating report saying that the Center could not certify the election results as announced by the CNE and that the election could “not be considered democratic.”

The report went on to say that the election “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages and violated numerous provisions of its own national laws.”

Also on Wednesday, White House National Security Council spokesman, retired Admiral John Kirby, said that U.S. patience was running out and cited the conclusions of the Carter Center report. 

Late Wednesday afternoon, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Brian Nichols, spoke to a special session of the Organization of American States and said flatly that the evidence that Gonzalez Urrutia had won was “irrefutable.”  

An effort to pass a resolution at the OAS to call on the Maduro regime to publish the actas, failed to win an outright majority of member states but 17 countries voted in favor (Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, and Uruguay.) None opposed. 

The rest of the countries present abstained, including Colombia and Brazil, though both independently have asked Maduro to release the actas.  Mexico did not attend.


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Demonstrations broke out across Venezuela after the CNE announcement. Police and other government security elements have tried to suppress the public outcry but so far, unsuccessfully.  

As many as 1000 opposition supporters have been detained. According to media reports, 16 people have been killed and many more injured.  A small group of opposition supporters closely associated with the Gonzalez campaign have taken refuge in the Argentine embassy.  Maduro’s minister of defense, who has publicly emphasized his loyalty to Maduro, has blamed the unrest on fascist elements of the opposition.  Reportedly, the regime has issued arrest warrants for Gonzalez and Machado and Maduro has said both should be “behind bars.”  Machado, for her part, has called on the opposition to “mobilize.”   

The possibility that the situation could evolve into generalized violence has elicited expressions of concern even from some of the regional leaders who, heretofore, had been moderate in their expressions of concern for the legitimacy of the vote count. The Secretary General of the OAS has worried there could be a ‘blood bath’.

To date, Maduro has been defiant, insisting that he won and explaining that the CNE had not presented official tally sheets because the country’s electrical grid had been hacked. Most of the region doesn’t buy it. While he still enjoys the support of Cuba, Nicaragua and a few other like-minded authoritarian states, Maduro, is now more isolated that ever. 

The question which no one is yet addressing is what can be done to force the regime to accept its loss. 

Earlier U.S. sanctions, mostly re-imposed in April of this year, did not persuade the regime to democratize and most countries in Latin America still consider “non-interference” a cardinal principle.  So, the reality on the ground is that there is a stand-off. 

Machado and Gonzalez seem to have the support of most of the people but Maduro, for now at least, has the military and the police.  It is not yet clear that either side is ready to blink.  

The Cipher Brief is committed to publishing a range of perspectives on national security issues submitted by deeply experienced national security professionals. 

Opinions expressed are those of the author and do not represent the views or opinions of The Cipher Brief.

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