The Venezuelan presidential election went exactly as I imagined it would. The opposition turned out in force and voted for their candidate and then socialist strongman Nicolas Maduro announced he'd won by securing 51% of the vote.
Did this actually happen? Of course not.
The opposition fully expected something like this and managed to gather the vote tally sheets from precincts across the country. These tally sheets are printed at each voting site are the proof that Maduro lost this election.
With the reassuring tone of someone who has consistently been considered an underdog, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado announced that her coalition had gathered more than two-thirds of vote tally sheets from polling centers nationwide, and that they show President Nicolás Maduro had lost his reelection bid.
The tally sheets known as actas — printouts measuring several feet that resemble shopping receipts — have long been considered the ultimate proof of election results in Venezuela. Opposition members knew they had to obtain as many of them as possible to refute the unfavorable election outcome they expected electoral authorities to announce.
The Washington Post took a look at the tally sheets and found that opposition candidate Edmundo González received twice as many votes as Maduro. They also had a reporter verify hundreds of the actual tally sheets, which are being held in secret locations to avoid them being seized by Maduro's goons.
The Post extracted and analyzed data from 23,720 of the tally sheets that were scanned and posted online by the opposition. Of those, González earned 67 percent of the vote to Maduro’s 30 percent.
Those tally sheets represent 79 percent of the voting tables used on July 28. Even if Maduro won every vote on the remaining 21 percent, assuming a similar turnout, he would still fall more than 1.5 million votes shy of González...
To corroborate the authenticity of tally sheets posted online, a Washington Post reporter reviewed hundreds of physical tally sheets, which are being stored by the opposition in cardboard boxes in secret locations across the country to evade a government crackdown.
Maduro is required by law to publish his own vote tally data within a week of the election. So far that hasn't happened, for obvious reasons. Instead, Maduro's goons seem to be doing their best to seize the evidence of their loss.
A half dozen masked assailants ransacked the headquarters of Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in the latest escalation of violence against opponents of Nicolás Maduro following the country’s disputed presidential election.
The raid occurred at around 3 a.m., Machado’s party said, adding that the assailants broke down doors and hauled away valuable documents and equipment. Images published by Machado’s party on social media show several walls covered in black spray paint.
The arrest comes as top officials, including Maduro himself, have threatened to arrest the opposition leader, who has gone into hiding as she seeks to rally Venezuelans to challenge last Sunday’s election results.
This was a blowout; however, Maduro remains in control of the domestic media, the Supreme Court and the military which means he can lie and bully people into compliance. And that's what he has been doing. Anyone refusing to go along with this stolen election is labeled a "fascist" and hundreds of people have been arrested for protesting the results.
Jorge Rodríguez, president of the Maduro-controlled national assembly and brother of Maduro’s vice president, blamed Machado and González for the violence and demanded their arrests. The government, he said, doesn’t negotiate with “fascists.”...
“There is clearly an absolute and total determination to not respect the popular will of the people through their vote, and to never respect peaceful protest in the streets,” said Alfredo Romero, president of Foro Penal. “It sends a clear signal of authoritarianism that has always existed but is increasing.”
Maduro himself is promising that anyone arrested will go straight to the country's worst prisons.
We have 2,000 prisoners captured. From there, they go to Tocorón and Tocuyito prisons, maximum punishment, justice. This time, there will be no forgiveness. This time, there will be Tocorón prison.
As Jazz pointed out last week, the US has recognized the opposition as the winner of the election but Maduro is a socialist dictator and he clearly plans to remain a socialist dictator for life. Unfortunately, there is no democratic solution for that problem.
Finally, special condemnation to the socialists who are still defending Maduro despite the evidence he lost. A Venezuelan leftist who appeared on Democracy Now called it a test for the international left.
I think that this is a test for the left internationally. If the left in many places of the world, in Latin America, in the United States, Europe, some sectors of the left, continue to call the Venezuelan government as a revolutionary leftist government, if this repressive, authoritarian, corrupt, extractivist government that is destroying the environment, and it’s in constant violation of human rights, is defined as left, if this is what’s presented as the offer for the future of humanity, then it’s clear that this left is contributing to increasing the appeal of the right wing and the far right wing. This has ceased to be a leftist government a long time ago.
Hugo Chavez once vowed that his socialist government would never be anything like the Soviet dictatorship of the Cold War era, but that's exactly what it has become a decade after his death. You'd think some people on the left might pick up a lesson from this but it never seems to happen.
As David pointed out recently, some folks are already trying to shift the blame. No matter how many times socialism is tried and ends badly for everyone involved, we're always told that real socialism has never been tried.
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