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Weekly Report - 13 August 2020 (WR-20-32)

VENEZUELA: Opposition faces political wilderness

Two former US Special forces soldiers, Luke Denman and Airan Berry, were sentenced to 20 years in prison in Venezuela on 8 August for their role in a botched amphibious ‘invasion’ in May this year (with the aim of abducting the de facto president Nicolás Maduro and members of his coterie and flying them to the US). The extent of involvement of the country’s political opposition in this attack, denied by the opposition leader Juan Guaidó, has not been clarified, but it served as a powerful reminder of the danger of misguided decision-making. The decision by 27 opposition parties to boycott Venezuela’s legislative elections on 6 December, on the grounds that they would be certain to be rigged and fraudulent, looks similarly misguided.

The attorney general, Tarek William Saab, tweeted that Denman and Berry had “admitted” to the crimes of “conspiracy, [criminal] association, illicit arms trafficking and terrorism”. Guaidó vehemently denied any involvement with the ill-fated ‘Operation Gideon’, although at the very least his advisers sounded out Jordan Goudreau, a former member of US special forces who set up Silvercorp USA, the Florida-based security company that carried out the wildly ambitious plan [WR-20-18]. Whatever the level of Guaidó’s involvement, there is little doubt that the failed plot provided Maduro with a coup of his own. The political opposition’s failure to participate in the upcoming legislative elections will do likewise.

The formal registration process for the elections began on 10 August. The opposition has legitimate concerns about the fairness and transparency of the elections, shared by international actors and argues that it stands no chance when the Maduro government controls all the levers of state. But the opposition has experimented with boycotting legislative elections before: in 2005. All this achieved was to see it consigned to the political wilderness, denuded of the limited power and influence it presently enjoys.

  • EU rejects observer role

The High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, said on 11 August that “the conditions are not met, at this stage, for a transparent, inclusive, free and fair electoral process” in Venezuela. Borrell said that given the lack of these “guaranteed minimum conditions”, the EU had declined an invitation from the Maduro government to send an “Election Observation Mission” to the country. The Maduro government is trying to confer legitimacy on the elections by intervening in the main political parties and placing them under the control of internal dissidents prepared to take part in the elections.

Competing might have helped to expose the rigged vote and done more to galvanise the popular protests Guaidó has been unable to inspire. The elections in Belarus on 9 August provide a case in point. The country’s dictator, Alexander Lukashenko, held on to power through electoral fraud, but the wave of support for the opposition candidate, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, laid bare any pretence that the elections were democratic. The rigged result triggered widespread protests, which had to be repressed, exposing Lukashenko’s authoritarian regime for what it is and at least gaining some momentum, and international attention, for the opposition cause. It is difficult to expect the Venezuelan public to risk repression by taking to the streets to support the country’s opposition parties if they are not prepared to struggle when the odds are stacked against them.

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