Maduro has spent years trying to destroy the opposition, detaining thousands of activists, journalists and dissidents and subjecting them to beatings, rape, electric shocks, mutilations, suffocation and other torture. With control over the media, courts, law enforcement and the military, Maduro has blocked many opposition candidates from competing for power. U.S. efforts to support the opposition, through pressure and sanctions under President Donald Trump and negotiations under President Biden, have met with mixed results. Despite sanctions that have battered Venezuela’s vital oil industry, Maduro has survived, in part with the support of Russia, China, Cuba and Iran. Once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries, Venezuela now faces one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, with more than 7.5 million people fleeing the country since 2015, including hundreds of thousands to the United States.
Surprisingly, after years of repression, the opposition is alive and well and will have a strong chance at the ballot box, provided the election is not stolen. The opposition’s charismatic front-runner, María Corina Machado, was disqualified by an unjust court ruling, but she continued to campaign, rallying her Democratic Unity Platform behind former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia. They were greeted by raucous crowds across the country, including one in Mr. Chavez’s hometown of Barinas on Saturday. Opinion polls conducted between May 23 and June 5 showed that two-thirds of voters want a change of government. Interest in voting is high. Surveys showed Mr. González leading 56 percent to 35 percent among those likely to vote.
For Maduro, defeat would mean not only the loss of his job, but also the end of the wealth and power he has acquired as part of a corrupt regime, as well as the elites who surround him and depend on him for their privileges. In the final days of the campaign, Maduro may be tempted to forcefully stop the vote or to declare himself the winner when he is not. Either outcome would be disastrous for the Venezuelan people and for the entire Western Hemisphere, which desperately needs a stable political outcome in this strategic country. The military and security forces will play a key role, but no one is sure whether they will protect Maduro from the people or defect rather than resist the overwhelming public demands for change.
For now, there are signs that Maduro may be taking a tougher stance. Volker Turk, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said, “We continue to receive reports of detentions, including of supporters and members of the opposition, as election day approaches.” Turk said his office has documented an increase in threats, harassment and violence against civil society participants, journalists, trade unionists and other critics of the regime, including “arrests and prosecutions, and 38 cases of arbitrary detention.” The non-governmental organization Access to Justice reported in June that there had been 46 arbitrary arrests for political reasons so far this year, including 18 arrests of members of Machado’s political party. The Maduro-controlled National Electoral Commission recently decreed that election observers can only operate at polling stations. And on May 29, the electoral commission rescinded a request to the European Union to send election observers. The UN said it would send a four-person team, but the results have been dismal. The Carter Center, a nonprofit human rights organization founded by former President Jimmy Carter that promotes democracy and resolves conflicts, also has a small number of monitors in the area.
Last year, the Biden administration partially relaxed sanctions in exchange for Maduro promising to allow the opposition to run freely in elections. Maduro reversed the agreement by arresting opposition members and using the courts to block Machado’s candidacy, leading the U.S. to reinstate some sanctions. Maduro is preoccupied with his own difficult election. Biden has little bandwidth to devote to Venezuela because he is dealing with other foreign crises, but he and the Democrats Latin American and European leaders should listen and speak out for a free and fair vote, which may be Venezuela’s last, best chance to end a generation of misrule.
