On July 28, the Venezuelan socialist regime stole yet another election, declaring that dictator Nicolas Maduro had been reelected to another six-year term, despite losing the vote by 40 percentage points, according to election witnesses and opposition reports. This sham election should have drawn global condemnation, especially from the United States. Instead, the Biden administration failed to label the election as fraudulent until yesterday, even as one U.S. senator described the president’s Venezuela policy a success and gave it credit for the hard fight against tyranny that Venezuelans are waging right now.
Plagued by hyperinflation, shortages, blackouts, and rampant crime, Venezuela has been the source of the world’s largest refugee crisis for years. The once-prosperous nation has deteriorated under 25 years of socialism, leading to an economy that is now just a quarter of its former size and causing 8 million people to flee the country.
Under President Donald Trump, the U.S. implemented a maximum-pressure strategy, sanctioning the Venezuelan regime by confiscating assets, banning oil imports from the state-owned oil company, and forbidding American and foreign firms from doing business with the Venezuelan state. This strategy included indicting Maduro and other top regime leaders for drug trafficking and terrorism-related charges. Though these measures didn’t lead to Maduro’s ouster, they did force him to lift price and currency controls and allow de-facto dollarization. American sanctions thus improved Venezuelans’ lives by ending shortages and hyperinflation.
The United States also recognized an alternative democratic government led by Juan Guaidó, hoping to create conditions for Venezuela’s military to overthrow Maduro. This strategy failed, however, as Maduro maintained power through the military, as well as through a large drug-trafficking operation known as the Cartel of the Suns.
Biden shifted away from Trump’s approach. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Biden lifted some oil sanctions on Venezuela, allowing foreign companies to trade Venezuelan oil and granting Chevron a license to extract oil, thus strengthening Maduro’s economic resources. The administration believed that it could negotiate with Maduro, asking the regime to release political prisoners, enable free elections, and allow opposition leader Maria Corina Machado to run in the 2024 presidential election. But Biden lifted sanctions unconditionally and received nothing in return, as many Venezuelan freedom activists had warned would happen.
Rubbing it in, Maduro set the election date for July 28, the birthday of Hugo Chavez, the nation’s late socialist dictator. Though Machado was barred from running, her stand-in candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, won overwhelmingly, with videos and reports showing not even a single vote for Maduro at some polling centers. But Maduro’s election council announced his victory and reelection. Among other proofs of the phoniness of the government’s official results was the fact that the percentage of the votes announced rounded up perfectly to the fourth decimal, a virtually impossible statistical outcome. Clearly, the announced vote tally was rigged; the Maduro regime arbitrarily chose a voting percentage and multiplied it by the total number of votes.
Machado announced that she had further evidence of the fraud because her election witnesses had been collecting precinct-level results at each polling center all night, which they published online, alongside the scanned evidence. Protests rapidly erupted nationwide, and Venezuelans in many cities began tearing down statues of Chavez. As usual, Maduro’s military and police responded with violence, shooting, kidnapping, and allegedly torturing protestors. So far, dozens have died, including a 13-year-old boy, and hundreds have been arrested. One opposition leader, Freddy Superlano, was captured by Maduro’s forces; his party alleges that he’s being tortured.
Despite clear evidence of the opposition’s victory, the Biden administration's initial impulse was merely to call on the regime to release voting data. (Of course, the regime hasn’t released the data, but it likely will do so once it has finished doctoring the numbers.) Worse, Biden published a readout of his call with Brazilian president Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, who called the Venezuelan elections “normal.” Biden thanked him “for his leadership on Venezuela.”
By lifting sanctions without securing concessions, Biden strengthened Maduro’s regime and undermined the Venezuelan fight for freedom. That is bad enough, but the needless delay in calling out Venezuela’s election as a fraud is simply shameful.
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