Maduro´s gangster capitalist regime
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So, today is the deadline when the Maduro regime was supposed to have presented a detailed breakdown of the voting results in the July elections confirming that it has legitimately won the elections. Predictably it has not done so at the time of writing. This is despite a solemn pledge that it would do so. See this.
It won’t present the evidence because it hasn’t got the evidence. You can’t go against the hard empirical and scientific evidence provided by the opposition on its website of scanned copies of over 80 per cent of the actas or voting tallies – that cannot be forged or faked – that show absolutely and without question that Maduro lost this election by a huge margin.
I don’t (obviously!) have any sympathy for the opposition and the overwhelming vote they got was, I understand, more a protest vote against the regime than a vote for the opposition, as such. Nevertheless, the outcome of the vote was crystal clear. Maduro lost the elections and his holding on to power is based on a shabby lie.
Those who continue to support this obnoxious and increasingly repressive gangster capitalist regime have demonstrated their utter contempt for the democratic process. They are aiding Venezuela´s slide into full-on fascism.
The analysis proffered by ALB and Robbo make no mention at all of probable CIA involvement. You could argue this a puzzling omission by the Forum’s intellectual heavyweights, or something more sinister…
Can please people stop posting links to that junk website “Global Research”.
“What the media are hiding”
Link to globalresearch.ca omitted
From Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky“Michel Chossudovsky (born 1946) is a Canadian economist and author. He is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Ottawa and the president and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which runs the website globalresearch.ca, founded in 2001, which publishes falsehoods and conspiracy theories…”
The analysis proffered by ALB and Robbo make no mention at all of probable CIA involvement. You could argue this a puzzling omission by the Forum’s intellectual heavyweights, or something more sinister
____________________________________________________________Nothing sinister about it all. Certainly, it is highly probable that Machado´s organisation has been funded by the CIA and the prospect of a Machado-led government is not one that the Venezuelan working class should look forward to at all. It would screw the workers just as much as the current gangster capitalist regime of Maduro is doing and it would be with the aid of “American imperialism” (in contrast to the Maduro regime that enjoys the support of Russian and Chinese imperialism)
I have omitted to talk much about the opposition because frankly – let’s face it – the main focus at the moment is on the fraudulent claims of the Maduro regime to have won the election. Any honest and democratic response would be to acknowledge that Maduro comprehensively lost the election – beyond a shadow of a doubt. All the hard empirical evidence is there for everyone to see.
It is absolutely appalling that significant swathes of the Left are so unprincipled and so blind to the reality as to be willing accomplices in spreading the lie that Maduro won. That, to me, is one of the most sickening and shocking aspects of this whole sordid business – that they would not only support an obviously corrupt plutocrat and lying bastard like Maduro (and his cronies) but that they would actually lie through their own teeth to help keep this individual in power….
Further evidence of just how intellectually and morally bankrupt a large part of the Left (with some honourable exceptions) has become.
“What the media are hiding”
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Globalresearch.ca may well be a peddler of “falsehoods and conspiracy theories” as LEW suggests but to be fair to the article published by this entity that has been linked here, it does make some good points (but also some very bad points!)
I am aware of the dodgy background of the two main opposition leaders it refers to – Edmundo Gonzalez and Maria Corina Machado. González involvement in Operation Condor is something that I’ve come across before many times in surfing the web. Very unsavoury! Personally, I think Machado is the more problematic of the two. I have a particular dislike of populist politicians and she, like Trump, falls into that category. So of course it goes without saying that in no way can we have any sympathy for these people – this quite apart from the fact that they stand for more capitalism!
However, the article then goes on to make several tendentious claims. I will look at just two of these
1) “The same goes for the exit polls. The Edison Research poll was eagerly mentioned. It foretold opposition candidate González 65 percent and Maduro 31 percent of the vote. The media failed to mention that this agency is linked to the CIA and they were silent about the exit polls of the prestigious Hinterlaces agency, which at noon had Maduro at 54.6 percent and González at 42.8 percent (very close to the official result).”
The Hinterlaces Agency which the article calls “prestigious” is no more neutral than the pollsters favouring the opposition. It is part of the Maduro propaganda machinery. According to Wikipedia:
“Efecto Cocuyo analysed an April 2024 poll by Hinterlaces and concluded that its methodology was inconsistent, citing contradictory dates, a small sample size, high number of undecided voters, and very high margin of error.[11][9] The poll results were published on website Fuser News, alleged by Efecto Cucuyo to be disseminators of Russian, Iranian, Chinese and Venezuelan state propaganda,[12] and also by Telesur, a state-controlled Venezuelan media company.[citation needed]”
Apart from that, all this reference to “exit polls” (on both sides!) can be taken with a pinch of salt. The only thing that counts is the actual vote and the physical evidence in the form of voting tallies or actas (generated by machines on some 30,000 voting tables) shows absolutely unequivocally that Maduro lost by a big margin. These actas cannot be faked or forged as I´ve said several times before. The opposition (whatever else we might think of them) were astute enough to anticipate that Maduro would try to pull a fast one. That is exactly what he attempted to do but, this time round, he was caught with his panties down. He hadn’t anticipated that the opposition would organise a massive campaign to collect all the physical evidence it required to show a fraud had been committed.
The subsequent wriggling by the regime and its supporters has been frankly pathetic. Maduro promised one month ago to provide a detailed breakdown of the votes by voting centre. This is, actually, a legal requirement – the CNE is legally required to present this evidence. It seems Maduro has conveniently forgotten that promise. What we got instead was a meaningless and farcical ritual involving the Supreme Court (unsurprisingly packed with Maduro supporters) to legitimise the CN´s unsupported claim that Maduro had won 51% of the vote
see here
2). “In addition, on election day there was a massive cyberattack from Colombia and the US against government institutions, including the National Electoral Council. This attack delayed the counting of votes for hours and gave the opposition the opportunity to come up with their own results before the official results were available.”
This is almost entirely BS There was apparently an attempted hack of just one particular computer that was outside of the CNE information loop (I may be wrong but I think this was for overseas votes – a few voters abroad were allowed to vote but the vast majority were denied the right to vote from abroad – including my partner). However, the effect of hacking this computer would have been immaterial. Inside the CNE loop (which would cover almost all of the voting results), these results are communicated to the CNE from the voting centres by landline – meaning they cannot possibly be hacked. So the CNE had all the information available to show that Maduro had lost. It chose to hide this information.
I think the claims about cyberattacks were a complete distraction to throw people off the scent. Apart from the one single example above they appear to be fabrications. Remember when Maduro was going on about a cyberattack from North Macedonia? Here´s what the government there has to say about this
https://balkaninsight.com/2024/07/30/north-macedonia-baffled-by-venezuelan-claims-of-hacking-attack/
What more is there to be said? Hardly any country on the South American continent including countries with left-wing governments like Chile, Columbia and Brazil – recognises the results. Venezuelan people don’t recognise the results including many Chavistas themselves who are appalled by what has happened. What happens next is anybody´s guess….
NEWSFLASH
It seems that virtually the whole country, including Caracas, today suffered from a massive total or partial power failure which also affected telecommunications
Power outages have been becoming more common and have been attributed lack of proper maintenance due to gross corruption and incompetence. Experts have apparently been warning that a massive outage such as what happened today was on the cards.
The Maduro regime has (predictably) been blaming it on sabotage by the opposition. The problem is that all the power installations, as I understand it, are heavily militarised. This prompts the thought – if it is sabotage could it possibly have been carried out by military personnel?
While the top brass of the military has pledged allegiance to the regime, low-ranking soldiers are more equivocal. Most are poorly paid unlike the top brass and of course, have familial links with Venezuelan workers who are suffering – particularly the poorest in the shanty towns that the regime is particularly intent on repressing
Could there be some kind of military coup in the offing? It wouldn’t be the first time such a thing has happened
That article in a pro-government newspaper seems to indicate that the famous actas (tally sheets) will have been submitted to the Supreme Court:
“Their [the pro-US opposition] demand that 100 percent of the tally sheets (‘voting records’) be submitted by the government, profusely parroted by the world corporate media, is phony (and they know it). Machado and Gonzalez have made several confusing claims, that they have 40 percent of the voting records, then 70 percent and also 100 percent. President Maduro has gone to the Supreme Court filing a review appeal which involves the government submitting all the ‘voting records’ in the possession of his coalition, asking the Supreme Court to summon all 10 candidates for them to submit their voting records.“
I read the part in bold as saying that the government (governing party) would be submitting the tally sheets to the court. Presumably they did.
Also, the Court seemed to request that the electoral commission publish the full “election results” within 30 days of the proclamation of Maduro as the winner. Maybe there is someone out there who can say when the result was officially proclaimed? Maybe it wasn’t 30 days after the date of the election?
In any event, if Maduro wants to claim “democratic legitimacy” for his re-election the government needs to publish them.
Valid point, by the way, asking why the pro-US opposition didn’t submit its tally sheets to the court. What had they to lose?
The Orinoco Tribune is a pro-government publication which never says anything negative about the Maduro regime. It beats me therefore how it can be quoted as though it were 100% reliable (or even, from the its record, even faintly reliable).
More from the Orinoco Tribune, this time confirming that the Supreme Court requested the electoral commission to publish the tally sheets. Don’t know if this is reliable or not, but why would a pro-government newspaper say this if the government wasn’t going to do it?
“Despite the fact that Venezuelan electoral authorities have presented evidence of cyberattacks on its electoral system, the heads of state requested that the details of the July 28 voting results be published. The Venezuelan Supreme Court had already requested the National Electoral Council (CNE) to do so in its ruling that ratified the victory of President Maduro.”
We are just going to have to wait and see if the electoral commission is going to accede to the supreme court’s request.
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