The Duran Podcast - Venezuela election; Maduro declared winner. US doubts results

Episode Date: July 29, 2024

Venezuela election; Maduro declared winner. US doubts results

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the elections in Venezuela. The official results from the election committee is that Maduro won, 51%, the opposition. They got 44%. Many analysts call the opposition the U.S.-backed opposition. That's what they're referred to. An interesting term to label them, but the U.S. backed opposition or the U.S. supported opposition is what they're going with. which consists of Maria Corina, but she cannot run in the elections. And so she has placed a surrogate and a stand-in, who is the 80-year-old Gonzalez.

And they got 44, 45%. Obviously, the collective West, they're saying this is a rigged election. Supporters of Maduro, they say he won. And so here we are. what could be a regime change effort? Maybe he'll try to regime change Maduro. Maybe not. Maybe he'll get through these elections and we'll just see more sanctions and pressure placed on him. What are your thoughts on the elections in Venezuela? I mean, I think you summedies up very well. Now, I don't know exactly what happened and to see these elections in Venezuela, because of course, I haven't been

following Venezuela hugely, neither of us have done. There are objective reasons. There are objective reasons. reasons, or so it seems to me, why Maduro might have won these elections along the lines that people say. I'm not saying he, you know, let's just put aside. I'm going to say there's objective reasons why he might have won and there are objective reasons why he might have lost. Firstly, why might he have won? Well, he's seen off repeated challenges from the United States and from people like, you know, remember Guaido, the man that the United States, states were supporting. So he's seen them off. He's had a much better relationship recently with the Biden administration than previous Venezuelan governments, including his own and that of Chavez, have done. The situation in Venezuela has been calmer. There has been a certain recovery in the economy. I understand that inflation has fallen. Oil production has been rising. The economy has come

off its bottom and has been growing again. And these are factors that would argue for a return of support to Maduro. The fact that the Americans tried and failed to overthrow him is likely to have solidified support for him within certain sections of Venezuelan society. And going beyond that, he's also able to draw on the support base that was created previously by his predecessor Hugo Chavez. So on the face of it, these figures, 51% for him, 44% for the opposition, are not implausibly or ridiculously, you know, contrary to what you might expect. Against that, There are also objective reasons why he might lose. Firstly, even if there's been a recovery in Venezuela,

there's been a massive fall in living standards. There's been considerable economic crisis. People have been under considerable economic stress. I don't know much about these opposition candidates, but the opposition has for the first time managed to put together a reunite around a single candidate, even though he's apparently somebody that people don't know very well. The government of Chavez and Maduro has been in power for a long time,

so you might expect a certain swing against them. So, you know, there are objective reasons one way or the other. The great difficulty is because we have this constant practice by the United States to try to engineer regime change in countries whose government, it doesn't like. It is impossible to look at an election like this

and say that there is no outside external interference that things are taking their course one way or the other and we can just look at these results and accept them or reject them as we choose.

So, for example, just to give a few examples of what we see, we've had a stack of opinion polls for several weeks now, us that the opposition is going to win by a massive, massive margin. Trouble is, I remember many regime change operations, which have also been preceded by opinion polls,

which have subsequently been proved to have been unreliable and largely doctored, which give a pro-American opposition the appearance of being far ahead in the opinion polls. then what then happens is that the result comes in, the opinion polls and the actual result are said to be, appear to be in complete conflict with each other, so people say the opinion polls must prove that the election result itself is rigged. So, I mean, you know, we have that history already.

Secondly, we have, again, complaints about the way in which the vote was conducted, claims made that the results took a long time to be published by the Venezuelan authorities. And I can say from personal experience, from experience in Greece, that it is indeed the case that sometimes when results are delayed, that is a sign that things are happening, which, you know, suggest that the vote is being manipulated or rigged in some way. Now the trouble with that, and I have to throw this in, is that of course there was a delay in the release of the votes, several hours. But if we go to a certain country to the north in the northern hemisphere, as we've seen in presidential elections which happen in that particular country, it can sometimes take weeks for results to come through. and then we are told that we must accept them.

And many of the same people who are telling us that we must absolutely accept those results are the same people who are now telling us that there's something suspicious about the results that we got in Venezuela because of these delays. The delay in Venezuela's case, does not look to me inordinately long.

It's a couple of hours. But, you know, there might be reasons. to be suspicious there. And the third thing I would say is that of course as night follows day, the candidate that's lost and his supporters say that there's been election fraud. And again, this is very, very much the sort of thing that you've got to understand. You know, you've seen so many times in so many regime change operations. I saw it in Ukraine, in 2004. We've seen it in Serbia. We've seen it in all kinds of countries and of course it's usually more often than not

turned out to be a false claim. Now, given all this is so, it's very difficult unless one is very familiar, much more familiar with Venezuelan affairs than I am, do actually make any concrete claims about this particular result. What I will say is this,

I am confident that over the next couple of days and weeks, there is going to be a concerted push by the opposition, backed by Western governments, who are clearly still deeply hostile to Maduro. You only have to look at the coverage of this election in the media to see that. There's going to be a concerted push to persuade us all that the election was indeed rigged and to try to affect a change of government there. and we're certain it seems to me to see protests,

and there will be demands for more escalations of sanctions, and all of that sort of thing. So in a sense, how the election itself was conducted is now almost immaterial, because we are now looking at another regime change attempt in Venezuela, even if perhaps the grounds for alleging that the election was rigged might be there, though I have to say,

coming back to what I've said, I don't obviously see them myself. How are they going to pull off, though, a regime change in Venezuela? I'm just trying to think how they would do it. It doesn't seem like they have the dynamics to get something going like what they did in Ukraine in 2014 or what they've done elsewhere. Maduro, while the opposition does have a lot of support, Maduro also has a lot of support. I mean, that's, I don't think, whether you support Maduro or don't support Maduro. You can't deny that he does, he does have a very large part of the population that supports him. The opposition does have a large part of the population that supports them.

But it doesn't seem like they have the dynamics, the collective west of the U.S. at this moment in time, or at least in the next 48 hours to try and get a regime change. I imagine after 48 hours, if we don't see any type of regime change actually taking hold, I would guess that Maduro is in the clear. And what we're going to see from the collective West is just more sanctions pressure. I don't know. I could be wrong about this. I've not been following what's been going on in Venezuela in the detail that we've been following what's been going on in Europe or Russia, Ukraine. So, I mean, I'm just kind of assuming what could possibly play out over the next.

week. What are your thoughts on this? I think that's right. I mean, 48 to 72 hours, I would say is about the critical time. If we don't get large numbers of people protesting on the streets, and we don't get a sense that there is, you know, in order for the to be regime change, there need to be defections from Maduro's government, his regime, if you prefer to call it that way. The military. The military. The political. police, key people within the civil service, the media as well, I mean the television media, those sort of things. We already seen attempts, by the way, to frame the narrative about this. I was reading articles in the newspapers, in the media, about how, I mean, just an example,

the headline in the Daily Carton-Telegraph, which is that Maduro wins on 109% of the vote. and I read elsewhere that he'd won on 130% of the vote. And then I went to the actual figures, and they showed as of the time when those headlines were published, only 80% of the vote had been published. There's already a discordance, but there's an attempt to frame the narrative unless they can find people in Venezuela.

I'm talking about important, serious people, people, army officers, police officers, military people, intelligence and security people, people in the media to start defecting from Maduro's government. I agree he has the support of a critical mass of people in Venezuela so that with the backing of the institutions he can remain in power. Now critical mass does not necessarily mean Maduro. majority support. He doesn't have to have the support of 60% or 50% or 50% plus one of the people of Venezuela behind him. But he has 30 to 40%, which is a lot of people. And as I said, the support of the institutions, the military, the police, the civil service, the media, the television media in

particular, then I think he's safe. Yeah, I agree with that. Maybe they can pull it off. Maybe the collective west, the U.S. can pull off the regime change. I don't want to try to predict this. It's difficult at the moment to try and get a feel for where this is going to go. But what about bricks? What about the countries that are happy to see Maduro win re-election, Russia, China, the countries that support him in South America. There are countries in South America. Yes, no way, absolutely. Not against him. Malay is probably the most high-profile figure that has come out against.

I believe Peru as well. Chile. But there are also many countries in South America that are supportive of Maduro. I'm not sure where Brazil and Lula stand on this. I think they are supportive of Venezuela and Maduro, but I'm not 100% on that. I don't know. Do you know what Brazil's position is on this? I think they support him with that enthusiasm.

I think that probably defines that feeling. And if I have to be honest, I think that's. That's the feeling amongst much of the many of the BRICS countries. In the sense that on the one hand, Venezuela is a friend. Maduro-led Venezuela is a friend. They would not particularly want to see a pro-American government established in Venezuela, which potentially is an important and rich country. At the same time, I mean, they've never been, you know, fully enthusiastic.

in embracing Maduro. They've to a certain extent kept their distance. It's interesting, for example, that whilst the Russians and the Chinese have been very keen to develop relations with Cuba over the last year or so, they've been a little more wary of Venezuela. I don't think that's anything to do with Maduro himself.

I think it's just that they calculate that the situation in Venezuela is just politically too unstable to make a definite full commitment possible. I think they will back him, but I think, because they don't want to see, as I said, regime change, and they certainly don't want to see a pro-Mavarian government, but they will wait to see what happens. And if the protests appear and start to gain traction,

if we see, you know, defections from the government take place. If it looks as if the government is going to collapse, well, they say, well, there it is. There's nothing much we can do. On the other hand, if he does get through the next, not 96 hours, but, you know, the next three or four weeks, if he's still in office in a month's time and looks like he's in secure control of the country,

then they're probably likely to control. conclude that Venezuela has become more stable under his leadership, his regime, his government has consolidated and they'll be able to move forward and back him more fully than they have done up to now. So I think this is their calculation. He has obviously strong hostility from parts of from the West, but I think as I said, around the world, the bricks, they're playing a game of wait and see. Bear in mind that Bricks is continuing its process of searching up, looking for new members.

Putin has just been to Malaysia, for example. He's had very productive and strong talks in Malaysia. Malaysia now looks like it wants to join the Bricks, and in fact is saying as much, but Malaysia is a stable country with a strong economy, and from that point of view, the bricks are key to bring Malaysia and Vietnam and Indonesia and countries like that and perhaps Algeria too into the fold.

Venezuela at the moment just looks a bit too unstable and a bit too vulnerable to American pressure for them. And that's, by the way, been true for a long time. Lavrov was in Malaysia as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. He was just in Malaysia. Yeah, exactly. It was Lavrov, not Putin.

Did I say Putin? Yeah. Lavrov was also, I mean, Putin was also. I mean, yeah. Yeah. They've had, they've had extensive discussions with Malaysia. Discussions, yeah. Just the final note, it does look like the military is very much on Maduro's side. That's the way it looks like right now.

But there could be defections. We don't know. So basically, we're going to wait two, three days, see what happens. with these results, see what the United States does. And then Bricks is going to probably wait another three, four weeks to see how everything stabilizes before they start to really putting a lot of support into the Maduro government. Absolutely. Or getting them closer to, getting Venezuela closer into Bricks. Okay, yeah.

I agree. Can I just say this is the decisive election in some respects. I mean, if Maduro remains in power, if he sees off the inevitable challenge that is going to come, if he's government and remains intact, and as you said, in two or three weeks' time, he's visibly there, and the protests are losing steam, then I think that the situation changes, because at that point, not only will Venezuela look much more stable than it has done, but it's most unlikely that we're going to get a situation going forward in which the opposition is able to mount a stronger challenge

as it has done in this election. So it seems to me. The likely position is that the economy in Venezuela is going to continue to improve. More people will start to benefit from that. That will consolidate the government further. And there'll be, I think, a widespread feeling that the opposition is simply not strong enough, even in the best conditions, to push Maduro and his government out. So at that point, for the Bricks, a long-term commitment to Venezuela becomes a lot more attractive. And then they might start thinking at some point of investing in a big way there and maybe starting to work.

work towards Briggs membership. So this is in a sense, this election and the next couple of weeks are the opposition's last chance. If they lose this one, then they may not be back for a very long time, if ever at all. Just saying. Yeah, agreed. All right. We will end the video there, the durand.

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