After the presidential election of last July 28 in Venezuelain which the democratic opposition candidate won with a difference of more than thirty percentage points, the National Electoral Councilunder the control of the authoritarian regime that governs Venezuela, announced an incoherent result that no one accepted.
This situation gave rise to a series of protests that were brutally repressed between July 29 and 31, as well as a process of persecution and arrest of opponents that continues to this day.
All of this seems to indicate that Venezuela is moving rapidly towards a process of consolidating a authoritarian regime that could govern the destiny of the country for years, as happens today with Cuba, Nicaragua, Türkiye or Belarus.
Although our intuition at first leaned towards a scenario of autocratic consolidation, a more detailed analysis of the situation indicates that a balance similar to that which existed before the opposition’s electoral victory has been formed. This keeps the odds of a political transition at the same level as it was before the incident occurred. electoral fraud on July 28th.
This conclusion, which may be counterintuitive, is confirmed by a survey carried out in the month of October – and which for security reasons has not been made public –, which confirms that the expectation of political change, as well as confidence in the leadership of Maria Corina Machado and support for Edmundo González-Urrutiaremain at the levels of the month of July.
This is how the uncertainty and expectations about what will happen next January 10the date on which the next presidential term begins in Venezuela, have gained new momentum following the electoral victory in the United States – for a second term after the 2016-2020 period – of Republican Donald Trump.
The strategy that the new US president will implement in the case of Venezuela is not yet clear. What is predictable is that Kamala Harris would have adopted measures diametrically opposed to those of Trump during his first term, when he applied strong sanctions on the Venezuelan government. I say this taking into account that the Democratic candidate was part of the outgoing administration, which has maintained negotiations and made sanctions on the country more flexible.
The unknowns will continue until January, when the Maduro’s swearing-in before the ruling Assembly (on January 10) and Trump takes office (on January 20). It will be then that the new American president must show his position, which could be a revised version of the one assumed in his previous administration.
Trump will encounter not only a fraudulent election, like that of 2018, but also a result that should result in the departure of Maduro and the swearing-in of González-Urrutia as president-elect.
An increase in pressure on the Venezuelan government does not imply that the licenses granted by the Treasury Department aa some US oil companies after the signing, in November 2023, of the Barbados Agreement. With this agreement between the government and the opposition, the roadmap was drawn up for the elections in which the opposition defeated the government in July 2024.
In fact, the Biden government has just approved the renewal of these licenses for six more months, in order to preserve the assets of the oil companies operating in Venezuela. After all, the interests of the US oil sector carry special weight for Trump. Traditionally, the connections of this sector have been more linked to the Republican Partywhich will now dominate not only the Executive, but also the legislative branch of the United States.
It is important to be clear that oil companies are not interested in defending the Maduro government, but rather in the impact of sanctions on their own interests. Likewise, they know that the real possibilities of having more stable and predictable conditions for their investments and businesses depend on political and institutional change in Venezuela.
Another issue that must be considered in Trump’s relationship with Venezuela is the immigration policy. If we review their narrative during the campaign, migration has once again been one of the key issues. Campaign messages about border closure and the deportations They will possibly translate, once in power, into forceful public policies that will affect, for better or worse, the relationship with the Venezuelan government.
The Venezuelan migrationone of the largest in the world (more than seven and a half million people have left the country since 2015), has been the protagonist of many problems in Latin America and the United States.
Although there is the thesis that if the sanctions were withdrawn the reasons for a new exodus from Venezuelathere are studies that reflect that Venezuelans are beginning to migrate again due to their political expectations, the perception of freedom and the interest in a future that is not possible if there is no political change.
It is very likely that Trump’s arrival to the White House for a second term will translate into a scenario of greater pressure on the Maduro government. The closeness and participation in the second Trumpist term of the billionaire Elon Musk and the senator Marco Rubiopublicly committed to opposing the Maduro government, seem to give impetus to this trend.
That is why, from the presidential palace of Miraflores, messages have already been sent of the Venezuelan government’s willingness to negotiate with the American president.
Negotiation that, for the Maduro government, would not include an agreement on political changebut the withdrawal of all sanctions in exchange for the delivery of oil under special conditions. What he is trying to do is that, in a pragmatic way, Trump prefers not to risk repeating the failure of the 2018-2020 period and thus consolidate a hegemonic authoritarianism that would end up impacting the future of democracy throughout the region.
(Article originally published in The Conversation)
The author is the Director of the Center for Political and Government Studies of the Andrés Bello Catholic University
