Venezuela Elections: A Choice between Colony or Sovereign Nation!

Marwa Osman, Ph.D 

Venezuela’s elections on 28 July is expected, one way or another, to bring change to the polarized and economically troubled country.

For 25 years, the Bolivarian Movement, named after Venezuela’s independence hero, Simón Bolívar, has run the country.

As expected, the US with all its NGO arms will play down the effort exerted by the Bolovarian Movement to challenge the illegal unilateral punitive sanctions against Venezuela, and has indeed thrown in every direction public poll, God knows from where, showing the opposition candidate Edmundo González leading incumbent President Nicolas Maduro by 20 to 30 percentage points (!)

Being here as an invited international observer for Venezuela’s 2024 Presidential elections, surely put a lot of vague issues into perspective for me as I come from a small country like Lebanon, where we so far have failed to elect our own President for almost 2 years now.

Watching the process from such a close distance takes away all the blur made possible by the US rhetoric and hegemony based on US-funded mainstream lies.

On Tuesday July 24, the Journalist William Castillo, Minister of Popular Power for Anti-Blockade Policies, reported that the Venezuela right plans to install a large Venezuelan Election Invisible Operation, based in Miami, coordinated by Marc Fertmann, a former CIA employee who previously worked in electoral processes in other countries.

Trying to figure out the truth, I contacted Brazilian journalist and analyst Carlos Alberto [Betto] Almeida who said that “this sinister official announced on a Venezuelan TV program, without presenting any evidence or data to support it, that the Maduro government intends to cut off the internet on Sunday [the election day] to organize an electoral fraud". 

However, Maduro’s government denies this and points out that Venezuela is currently the country that holds the most elections and referenda in the world.

In reality, the conservative opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, refused to sign the Commitment to the Electoral Court to respect the results of the polls. 

According to Willian Castillo, it is exactly the opposition, guided by the US, that organizes an operation to make the Maduro government invisible. The campaign called Zero Maduro in the media intends to spread false information and give victory to Edmundo Gonzalez, with a huge difference in his favor.

At the same time, Almeida thinks that this makes it impossible for the public, internet users and television viewers, to have access to information with the official results of the Electoral Court, scheduled to be released on Sunday night.brazil

Almeida stated that “it is a new version of Proconsult organized by the SNI, with support from Rede Globo, to defeat Leonel Brizola in 1982, in Rio de Janeiro.  This is the same scheme.”

However, Venezuela is the country that that held the largest number of elections in the world. Caracas has organized 33 elections and referenda in 25 years of Revolution. Chávez has also submitted himself to the ballot box 5 times in 12 years, while Maduro did the same 3 times in 10 years.

In fact, Lula said years ago that Venezuela's problem was too much democracy!  A compliment I guess.

Voting here is both electronic and printed, and there is an audit of 50% of the ballot boxes with printed votes, in which the voter, in the act of voting, becomes the inspector of his or her own vote, before placing it in the unassailable ballot box.  

In parallel, Castillo explains that this right-wing Operation is coordinated by Eua. “It plans to publicize only those research institutes that have always proven to be wrong in the Venezuelan elections, and that have always predicted defeats for Chávez to the right, and also for Maduro.

Electoral reality has always contradicted them. This mega operation, based in Miami, silences the official results and promotes over-publicization of a supposed opposition victory, in a blatant way, to proclaim that there was fraud is reminiscent of Guaidó's proclamation as president of the republic, absurdly recognized by the United States and dozens of other countries.

Today Guaidó is just a fugitive from justice, accused of stealing the assets of the Venezuelan state, which is recognized even by his former sponsors in Washington.

Almeida stresses that it is essential to respect electoral laws and results, as "Lula recently said", but the US-backed candidate refused to sign the Commitment to Respect the Polls. 

What does this portend?  We’re in front of a new large-scale media operation, funded by US agencies, such as NED and USAID, or the Konrad Adenauer and Friedrich Ebert Foundations, from Germany, which have already published a list of media outlets that they consider “trustworthy”. 

Obviously, these are vehicles that also receive funding from these same agencies and that will proclaim that the opposition candidate is the winner.

It is clear that the Electoral Court has the prerogative of organizing, counting and publishing the results, in accordance with the law approved by all parties.

Added to that, the experience of 25 years of participatory democracy indicates that there is stability, security and electoral legitimacy in the country, which, even under harsh sanctions, maintained the electoral calendar.

This experience led the Carter Foundation to proclaim Venezuela as the most democratic electoral system in the world!

In other words, it is just another destabilizing operation against the Bolivarian government of Venezuela.  All these attempts have been frustrated.  However, holding the greatest oil wealth in the world, and willing to maintain sovereignty over it, Venezuela will remain to face renewed threats from the northern empire.