Venezuela’s presidential elections: Attempted coup or fraud? An interview with Reinaldo Iturriza

Writer, activist, sociologist and director of the Centre for Studies for Socialist Democracy Reinaldo Antonio Iturriza López discusses the competing — and inadequate — narratives surrounding Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election in this interview conducted by Federico Fuentes for LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The July 28 presidential election seems to be a repeat of previous elections, with the opposition again claiming fraud and the government once more denouncing an attempted coup. What is your assessment?

Allow me, first of all, to sketch out the typical assessments made every time an election occurs in Venezuela. As a general rule, the basic starting point — supported by empirical evidence — is that each campaign sees two antagonistic sides facing off: the set of forces aligned with the program of the Bolivarian revolution against the set of forces opposed to it.

From there, we get varying interpretations as to why the former has been in power for 25 years. One section of the left tends to see Chavismo’s successive victories as proof of the enormous capacity of its base to resist and the undoubted political capacity of its leadership to neutralise imperialism’s attacks and prevent the most reactionary forces from returning to power. For its part, the right constructs a narrative according to which Chavismo’s hold on power can only be explained by its authoritarian character: all its electoral victories are invariably dubious or lacking legitimacy and are the result of the government manipulating the masses, indiscriminate use of public resources during election campaigns, blanket disqualification of opposition leaders, or fraud. Another section of the left endorses some of these views in a bid to dissociate itself from Chavismo on the basis that it is authoritarian, disrespects the principle of the democratic alternation of power, manoeuvres against the opposition, represses public demonstrations, curtails freedoms, control of institutions and is responsible of economic excesses.

In response, the section of the left with a more positive assessment of the Bolivarian revolution tends to denounce the gross double standards that exist when dealing with Venezuela. It points out that what are identified as mistakes, weaknesses or excesses of Chavismo in power are considered normal in any other democratic country — not to mention the silence when it comes to societies under truly dictatorial regimes or in the face of the genocide in Gaza, for example.

Those are the facts and the different interpretations of those facts, outlined in a very summarised fashion. Periodically, elections take place in Venezuela where particular forces face off against each other. Then, once results are known, we move onto the phase of debating what happened based on evaluations informed by preconceived political beliefs. This is normal, this is how it has been, and, in principle, everything indicates this is how it will continue to be. So, there seems little point trying to explain these different interpretations, because we already know that they simply reflect pre-existing political positions, etc.

If we are genuinely interested in understanding what is happening in Venezuela, we need to instead start with what has actually occurred; that is, with indisputable facts. As this was a presidential election, we need to not just focus on the competing political forces — which, of course, includes the nefarious influence exerted by US imperialism — but above all on the sovereign; that is, the depositary of popular sovereignty, the citizenry.

The first fact to bear in mind is that Venezuelans who voted on July 28 did so in a context of a profound crisis of political representation. Generally speaking, the political class is in the worst state it has been for the past 25 years. On the one hand, we have an anti-Chavista political class burdened by the accumulated weight of successive defeats; reviled by its social support base; prey to its own contradictions; lacking an undisputed and unifying leadership; with little strategic clarity; that is under the tutelage of the US government; and is paying the price for its anti-democratic dalliances that squandered its accumulated political capital. On the other hand, we have a governing class that is also prey to its own contradictions. This generated an internal dispute in which the most conservative and pragmatic tendencies won out and imposed what [Italian Marxist Antonio] Gramsci called the anti-program of the passive revolution. This in turn led to the working class ceasing to constitute the backbone of the governing bloc of forces.

Since the governing class’s defeat in the 2015 parliamentary elections (a clear sign of the fracturing of this national and popular hegemonic bloc), but especially from September 2018 onwards (when it began implementing an orthodox-monetarist economic program), this governing class has tried to recompose its bloc of forces from above together with fractions of the capitalist class. This process created the conditions for a gradual disintegration of its political strength from below. For the past decade, huge contingents of what was once the government’s working-class support base have disaffiliated from Chavismo. An important part of Venezuelan society once again finds itself in a “situación de vaciamiento ideológico” (situation of ideological emptiness), to use an expression coined by [Bolivian Marxist René] Zavaleta Mercado. This phenomenon has not existed in the country since the 1990s and, it should be noted, was a political problem of the first order that Chavismo was able to resolve.

What are the implications of all this for the July 28 presidential elections? First, it was quite clear that both forces went into the campaign with their respective social bases in a profoundly weakened state. Second, that the strategic shift adopted by the governing class means we have to question a fact once taken for granted: that elections are a contest between two antagonistic historical projects. Programmatic debate was practically absent throughout the campaign. Third, and directly related to the previous point, an important segment of the citizenry — those in a “situation of ideological emptiness” — exercised their right to vote despite not feeling represented by any candidate. Lastly, a considerable part of the opposition candidate’s vote did not reflect an identification with anti-Chavismo, but was fundamentally a vote against the government. The opposite is also true: part of the official candidate’s vote did not reflect support for the government, but rather rejection of a potential ultra-right victory.

It is important to underline that in such a scenario, it was crucial that the electoral arbiter left no room for doubt as to the result, by guaranteeing that corresponding audits were carried out and publishing results broken down by polling booth. Not only has this not happened, but the National Electoral Council’s (CNE) explanations as to why it was unable to carry out its functions — namely, a hacking of the voting system — have been quite frankly inadequate, to say the least.

All of this means that typical interpretations are completely inadequate for assessing what has happened in Venezuela since July 28. They are based, at best, on superficial readings and, at worst, on a complete ignorance of what has occurred in recent years in terms of the balance of political forces. It is also clear that, beyond the counterposed versions of events (fraud or attempted coup d'état), what we have is a situation in which reasonable doubt, and with it a genuine sense of unease, has taken hold in the heart of Venezuelan society. The popular protests that took place on July 29 were a direct result of this. There is no doubt that both forces sought to eventually intervene in the events of that day: one side by seeking to capitalise on discontent and stoking violence, the other by imposing order. We can clearly say that today, order reigns in Venezuela, though lingering doubts and a sense of unrest remain.

Why do you think the CNE and the government have so far failed to release a breakdown of the vote and tally sheets? What is your opinion of the Supreme Court (TSJ) ruling?

It is worth recalling the exact words of the electoral council head Elvis Amoroso, when announcing the first official bulletin in the early hours of July 29. He said: “The booth-by-booth results will be available on the website of the National Electoral Council in the next few hours, as has traditionally occurred, thanks to the automated voting system. Likewise, the results will be handed over to political organisations on a CD, in accordance with the law.” As I said before, not only did this not happen, but the explanations why have been frankly insufficient.

I would add that publishing results in a disaggregated and verifiable manner is not just a technical matter, it is a genuinely substantive issue: we are talking about something that is both an obligation of the electoral arbiter and a right of the Venezuelan people, who feel this right has been stolen from them. The situation has not changed as a result of the TSJ ruling, which validated the CNE results while urging it to publish them in accordance with the law; that is within 30 days of proclaiming the new president of the republic.

How do you view the role being played by Latin American governments?

I would highlight the role being played by the governments of Colombia, Brazil and Mexico. In my opinion, they are motivated by a genuine interest in mediating between the contending parties, while prioritising recognition of the people’s will. Their public statements have been marked, at least so far, by common sense, which seems to me essential at this time. I believe it is correct to point to the need for “the transparent publication of disaggregated and verifiable data”. Such a position is in line with the interests of the working class majorities in our country.

Taking a step back, how did we get into this situation? In particular, how would you characterise the course that Nicolas Maduro’s government has taken in recent years?

I have provided some important background to help us understand how we got to the current situation. But I would like to add the following: I completely understand why the impacts of the imperialist economic siege on Venezuela are so often invoked to account for popular unrest. What is more, I would say the reason is obvious: in effect, this siege has exponentially multiplied any damage inflicted on the population by the economic crisis that existed prior to, for example, the first sanctions being imposed on Petróleos de Venezuela in August 2017. We are talking about punitive and illegal measures that have sought to accelerate the collapse of the national economy and, to put it bluntly, produce human suffering and deaths. Faced with these circumstances, with such an extreme situation, a society such as Venezuela’s — which has lived through years of intense politicisation — will naturally proceed to weigh up the damage caused by such attacks against the decisions taken by the political leadership to circumvent them. If we can say that anything is deeply rooted in the political culture of the average Venezuelan citizen, it is the conviction that its political leadership must assume responsibility in the face of such challenges — Hugo Chávez played a fundamental role in this.

Well, the way the governing class dealt with these circumstances was to construct a narrative according to which there was no alternative to the measures it eventually adopted, for example in the area of economic policy. This was the first bad sign. In other words, no space was allowed for public, participatory and protagonist deliberations over varying options, for the simple reason that there was only one option. But what if the only alternative called into question the strategic goals of the Bolivarian revolution itself? Bad luck. Once this logic was installed within the governing class, the only alternative for controlling hyperinflation, to give one example, was the set of measures applied from September 2018 onwards: drastic cuts in public spending, wage devaluation to a historic low, payment of working class incomes in the form of bonuses, etc.

This sequence of events of material impoverishment (which is always, at the same time, spiritual impoverishment and drastically affects social ties), combined with an imperialist siege that exponentially multiplied material impoverishment, and the political impoverishment from ruling out any alternatives for dealing with the situation, all of which was followed by more material impoverishment helps at least partially explain the very grave fact that a significant part of the citizenry went to the extreme of considering Venezuela’s ultra-right as a viable political option.

What position(s) have political forces of the radical left taken towards the election? What options exist to strengthen the left in the current context?

I can answer you in terms of where my activities are focused: there are many options, and we are working to multiply them. We are trying to create spaces to analyse the situation on the basis of at least a minimum level of intellectual rigour and honesty. In these spaces, we are trying to recover from oblivion the most valuable aspects of Venezuela’s revolutionary left traditions, seeking to ensure they are transferred to the next generation so that those just starting to become active do not feel as though they are beginning from scratch. There is an enormous accumulation of struggles and knowledge that can help shed a lot of light on what we need to do now and into the future. We are undoubtedly going through a particularly difficult time, but this will not be the first or last time we face such circumstances. We are not only building links with activists in many parts of the country (and outside Venezuela), but also working to build more effective political articulation. Moreover, we are clear that no matter the circumstances, the revolutionary left cannot afford to view itself as a ghetto, as a handful of activists that offer testimonies of self-sacrificing struggles, and so on. As [Venezuelan revolutionary] Alfredo Maneiro taught us, the solution to the country’s fundamental problems goes through but beyond the left. The revolutionary left must be able to speak to the working class majorities and distinguish itself through its vocation for power, as Chávez explained.

Faced with a confusing situation resembling a political labyrinth with no visible way out, I believe it is time for self-restraint and strong character. Actions motivated only by moral indignation will invariably lead to false steps. I am convinced new situations will arise. As I said, order reigns in Venezuela and with it calm, but it is an anxious calm. The Venezuelan people will have the last word.