When an autocrat declares victory despite evidence to the contrary, you are in make-believe territory. Last Sunday night, after six long hours waiting for the election authorities to deliver results, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was declared the winner of what we now understand was a tainted election.
There was hope in the weeks leading up to the vote: massive public demonstrations supporting the opposition candidate Edmundo González, an international community, including the U.S., backing up the electoral process with international monitors and polls suggesting a landslide victory for González.
In the long waiting hours, even with independent exit polls confirming González’s triumph, Venezuelans worldwide took to the streets. Here in North Texas, there were parades of cars driving up and down the highways waving Venezuelan flags with the words “Venezuela Libre” painted on their windows. It was touching to see migrants of this South American nation holding on to their desire to get their democracy back.
But the longer we waited to hear results, the more likely it seemed that fraud was brewing. Nobody except Maduro’s allies believes the outcome. Even those who have long sided with Maduro, like Colombia and Brazil, are now calling for an independent verification.
Maduro is the inheritor of Hugo Chávez’s disastrous Marxist policies reboot. His ruinous statism has driven Venezuela’s economy into the ditch and driven its citizens from their homeland in search of some way to build a better life.
We had hoped, based on the broad and deep disgust Venezuelans have developed for Maduro and “Chavismo,” that this election might be a new start. But Maduro is known as a master of voter suppression, and he didn’t disappoint.
“We won and the whole world knows it,” María Corina Machado, the opposition’s leader, told journalists in a Monday news conference. “We are a civic peaceful movement, and that’s how we will keep working until we make the truth prevail, and it will prevail.”
In the past, security forces from the Maduro government have violently crushed public demonstrations, and so far Venezuelans seem to have no appetite to confront the regime.
In exchange for a free and fair election, the U.S. recently lifted crippling sanctions. That has helped boost Venezuela’s economy and stem a tide of migrants. Given this farcical outcome, those sanctions must be reimposed immediately.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., criticized the Biden administration for lifting the oil sanctions as part of an agreement with the Venezuelan opposition and the Maduro regime, known as the Barbados accords. We must disagree. This was a gamble worth taking. Even if it ultimately backfired, it was an appropriate attempt.
What happens next is an open question, but one thing is certain: The Venezuelan autocrat will be more isolated after wasting a golden opportunity for a peaceful transition.
The U.S. and every Latin American nation that cares about democracy and rule of law must work against Maduro and on behalf of the Venezuelan people until this fraud is driven from office.
