Venezuela’s tumble into authoritarianism is poised to enter an even harsher new phase this week with Nicolás Maduro set to extend his 12-year rule despite widespread suspicions that he stole last year’s presidential election.
The man widely believed to have won that vote – retired diplomat Edmundo González – fled abroad to escape a draconian post-election crackdown but has vowed to return home to challenge Maduro’s planned inauguration on Friday.
Maduro’s feared interior minister, Diosdado Cabello, warned the 75-year-old he will be arrested if he tries. “Come! We’re waiting for you!” he goaded González on Monday.
Cabello insisted the start of Maduro’s third six-year term would not be derailed and scotched suggestions the military would switch sides – something the opposition is urging it to do. “The barracks are calm,” claimed Cabello, who has ordered a major deployment of security forces to quell dissent.
Observers say Maduro’s expected inauguration – which the leaders of most democratic governments will boycott – represents a painful milestone in the slow collapse of one of South America’s largest democracies.
John Polga-Hecimovich – the co-editor of a new book called Authoritarian Consolidation in Times of Crisis: Venezuela under Nicolás Maduro – believed last year’s “blatant” election fraud exposed how regime hardliners had vanquished moderates who favoured conceding defeat to González.
“I don’t even think there’s a pretence now of negotiation or of consensus building or of reaching out to the opposition … It’s a wholesale rejection of the opposition and a wholesale rejection of democracy,” said Polga-Hecimovich, a political scientist from the US Naval Academy.
By stealing 2024’s election – which voting tallies published by the opposition suggests Maduro lost heavily – Maduro’s administration went from being one of “electoral authoritarianism” to being “a closed, hegemonic authoritarian regime,” the academic argued.
“It’s a type of dictatorship,” added Polga-Hecimovich, who believed the Venezuelan strongman had shown his true colours to the world with his theft of the election and post-election crackdown.
“He’s a brutal dictator who imprisons people who think differently and who oppose him. He’s a dictator who oversaw the biggest economic collapse in modern Latin American history and is responsible for the largest exodus of migrants in the hemisphere’s history. And he is someone who has constructed a shameful legacy,” Polga-Hecimovich said.
On the eve of Friday’s ceremony in Caracas, activists accused Maduro’s agents of abducting more than a dozen figures linked to the opposition, including González’s son-in-law, Rafael Tudares, human rights activist Carlos Correa, and a prominent opposition politician called Enrique Márquez. “A full-scale witch-hunt is in swing,” tweeted Ivan Briscoe, a Latin America expert from Crisis group.
Marcel Dirsus, the author of a recent book called How Tyrants Fall and How Nations Survive, said history offered some hope to Venezuela’s long-suffering opposition, despite their repeated failures to unseat Maduro.
“Oftentimes when change does come, it’s rapid,” Dirsus said highlighting the recent downfall of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a Maduro ally.
“The Maduro regime may look stable now, but there’s every chance it’s not going to be in power even by next week, or next month, or perhaps next year … Dictatorial stability is often a mirage … Maduro is mortal and eventually he will fall,” Dirsus predicted.
Dirsus said his research showed that 69% of personalist dictators were jailed, forced into exile or killed after leaving power: “So if history is any indication, Maduro’s chances of a tranquil retirement are worse than a coin flip.”
Recent history offers a more favourable prognosis for Hugo Chávez’s heir, a 62-year-old union leader-turned foreign minister who was democratically elected after his mentor’s premature death from cancer in 2013.
After leading the oil-rich nation into one of the worst peacetime economic meltdowns in modern history – a situation aggravated by US sanctions – Maduro saw off a US-backed campaign to topple him in 2019 by trying to spark a military rebellion. He has also survived three major waves of street protests – in 2014, 2017 and 2019 – and a 2018 assassination attempt.
González’s key backer, the opposition leader María Corina Machado, urged Venezuelans to retake the streets on Thursday, the eve of Maduro’s planned inauguration, to demand his exit “with the energy of a swollen river”.
“This is a historic day … a day we will tell our grandchildren about and our grandchildren will tell their grandchildren about,” she told journalists from a secret location somewhere in Venezuela on Tuesday.
Thousands heeded the call in cities including Caracas, Maracaibo and Barquisimeto, despite the risk of arrest or a violent crackdown. At one march in the capital, a tunic-wearing monk carried a poster reading: “You don’t beg for freedom, you fight for it and you win it!”
By mid-afternoon Machado had joined them, clambering onto a truck at the centre of the demo to address the throng. “We are not afraid!” the 57-year-old politician shouted in what was her first public appearance since going into hiding to avoid arrest more than 130 days ago.
Machado, a charismatic conservative who championed González after being banned from running for president, claimed Maduro’s regime was fracturing with soldiers and police officers considering “if they want to be tyrants who suppress or heroes who defend their people”.
Panama’s former president, Mireya Moscoso, suggested the opposition’s hope was that Thursday’s demonstrations would spark an anti-Maduro military revolt that would allow González to fly into Venezuela from the Dominican Republic. “We are certain that [these protests] will revolutionise the country and that on Friday Edmundo will be able to take power,” Moscoso told reporters on Wednesday.
Polga-Hecimovich believed Machado was hoping Thursday’s rallies might “embolden a military rebellion” against Maduro but pointed out that no such mutiny had materialised in 2019 or after 2024’s election.
That was the result of Maduro’s “quite brilliant” coup-proofing of his regime, through a highly strategic mix of largesse, purges, promotions and loyalty to the defence minister, Vladimir Padrino López, who has held the post for over a decade.
“I expect many democratic states are going to throw their weight behind Edmundo González. They’re going to criticise Maduro and isolate the regime. But it’s an uphill battle, nonetheless, for the opposition to unseat someone who has shown his regime to be so resilient in the face of both internal and external pressure.”
David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from Tulane University, foresaw “a very underwhelming, sad inauguration” for Maduro, who has produced no evidence for his claim to have won a third term. The presidents of Brazil and Colombia, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Gustavo Petro, are not expected to attend having refused to recognise the result. Bolivia’s government has said its president, Luis Arce, is too busy to go.
“It’s going to be pretty pathetic,” Smilde said.
But at the end of the day Maduro was likely to remain in power. “I don’t want to be a voice of pessimism, but it’s hard not to think that,” Polga-Hecimovich admitted.
