What scenario opens up after the presidential elections?

On July 28, 2024, Venezuela held presidential elections that put the country, once again, in the spotlight of the international community. According to the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE) and without yet announcing the breakdown of the voting records, the election was won by President Nicolás Maduro.

As a result, the country remains mired in uncertainty, with the opposition denouncing fraud and claiming victory, the international community divided and a large part of the population in the streets.

However, for the ruling party, this series of disagreements does not seem to be something that will prevent Maduro from starting his third term. Proof of this is the government’s announcement on Tuesday, August 27, in which it shares the new appointments within the Executive.

Ministerial shake-up: a way to show that Maduro “will remain in power”

On Tuesday, Maduro announced the renewal of his cabinet. Among the most relevant appointments is that of Diosdado Cabello, the 61-year-old Chavista deputy who will now be the new Minister of the Interior and Justice, a portfolio he already headed in 2002. At the appointment ceremony, the president assured that Cabello will also be “vice president of the Government” and highlighted his powers to “consolidate peace” in Venezuela in the face of “so much conspiracy.”

Two days after the elections, Cabello, considered the number two of Chavismo, threatened the Venezuelan opposition, also pointing to the two main leaders of this sector of the country: María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, Maduro’s rival in the elections. Cabello said that these two people are going to be “screwed,” after González and Machado rejected Maduro’s victory proclaimed by the CNE.

Another important move is that of the new Minister of Oil: Delcy Rodríguez. This official had been serving as Executive Vice President and Minister of Economy, Finance and Foreign Trade.

But what does this ministerial shake-up mean for Venezuelan political reality?

For Pablo Andrés Quintero, a Venezuelan political scientist and consultant, what the government is seeking with these appointments is “to demonstrate political strength, to demonstrate governability, control. It is a way of communicating to national and international public opinion that political power is still in the hands of Nicolás Maduro.”

That is to say, in the words of the analyst consulted by this newspaper, “what the Government is precisely seeking is to control its own narrative that Nicolás Maduro will remain in power.”

And, despite the disagreements inside and outside Venezuela about the electoral exercise of last July 28, “whether it is democratic or not matters little to the Government.”

What will happen with oil and sanctions against Venezuela?

The oil portfolio is perhaps one of the most important for Venezuela, due to the commercial, economic and diplomatic relations that Venezuelan crude oil brings together.

The issue of oil is crucial, given that it is the basis for the sanctions imposed on the country in response to some sectors of the international community.

Speaking to France 24, Pablo Andrés Quintero said that “the lifting of sanctions will not happen for now.”

However, the fact that Rodríguez is to take over the leadership of this Ministry may be a gamble by the Government in response to the achievements that this official has delivered so far.

Other appointments made on Tuesday included Héctor Rodríguez (Minister of Education), Ricardo Sánchez (Minister of Higher Education), Leticia Gómez (Minister of Tourism), Grecia Colmenares (Minister of Youth), Arnaldo Sánchez (Minister of Sports), Magaly Viña (Minister of Grandfathers and Grandmothers) and Johanna Carrillo (Minister of Women).

The pressure from the ruling party on the opposition continues

Opposition presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia was summoned for the second time on Tuesday by the Attorney General’s Office to give an account of an investigation that this Venezuelan body is carrying out against him.

Last Sunday, González Urrutia said that the Prosecutor’s Office “intends to subject him to an interview without specifying the condition in which he is expected to appear and pre-qualifying crimes that he did not commit.”

Regarding the summons, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the largest anti-Chavez alliance in Venezuela, denounced “judicial harassment” of its standard-bearer González Urrutia.

The Democratic Unitary Platform of Venezuela denounces before the country and the world the judicial harassment to which our presidential candidate is subjected @EdmundoGUwho overwhelmingly won the recent presidential election on July 28.

The repeated citation of… pic.twitter.com/5Zm0pRJta3

— Venezuela Unit (@unidadvenezuela) August 27, 2024

Other complaints against the Maduro government were also made on Tuesday.

Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado reported that Perkins Rocha, the legal advisor of the PUD, was arrested. In a post on her X account, Machado said that Rocha was “kidnapped” and blamed the “regime of Nicolás Maduro” for the incident.

Thus, the statements, media clashes, and accusations – from both the opposition and the government – have become even more intense during this first month after the Venezuelan presidential elections, while an agreement between the parties seems to be increasingly less likely, so that the Venezuelan population ends up being the sector most worn out by this cross-rhetoric.

This leads to “greater recklessness on the part of opposition members in expressing their views” and “an increase in abstention in the next electoral processes, as there is no concrete practical solution to what happened on July 28, either through institutional means or through the international community,” Quintero pointed out in an interview with France 24.

For the analyst, “The claims of current opponents do not generate local impact within the government.”

Instead, “What they do is create noise on social media, they generate communications in the international community”. That is why, in relation to the media activity of the opposition, the political scientist explains that “these messages and claims have not managed to permeate the power structure.”

“Venezuela is a geopolitical conflict”

What scenarios are opening up for the country after this first month and the electoral exercise itself? This question has been attempted to be answered by various actors, some more forcefully than others, within the international community.

The Venezuelan government has been repeatedly asked to hand over the voting records to put an end to the accusations and speculations, requests that have so far been ignored by Maduro and the CNE. At the same time, calls have also been made from outside for new elections and the transition of power to Edmundo González Urrutia – Maduro’s opposition rival – by those who recognise him as the winner of the elections.

Even so, there is still no key evidence or fact that would allow us to predict any viable scenario.

On the one hand, “The government is not thinking about a transition and I think that was demonstrated with the appointment of the new cabinet,” Quintero points out.

In the international dimension, what happens or does not happen with Venezuela will undoubtedly have repercussions on the reality of the rest of the countries that maintain relations with Caracas. In fact, there may be geopolitical interests that advance in parallel with what is happening in Venezuelan territory.There will be much more open communication between China, Iran and Russia due to Venezuela’s entry into the BRICS, which will take place in the coming months,” points out the Venezuelan political scientist.

And, although there are still a large number of countries that do not recognize the re-election of the current president, “Time goes by and the idea that Nicolás Maduro is an elected president for other countries in the international community is growing,” Quintero says.

“Today we see that Venezuela is a geopolitical conflict, that Venezuela is a conflict where multiple economic interests converge at a global level,” adds the expert.

Therefore, what happens in Venezuela not only determines the future of Venezuelans, but also the coexistence of the country with its neighbors on the continent and the rest of the world.