Washington, DC – A new report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research(CEPR) provides an analysis of Venezuela’s disputed election and outlines a path forward for international actors, particularly the United States, to address the political conflict.
The report recommends that the Biden administration and other external actors should support the efforts of Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia to reach a negotiated agreement and allow diplomatic efforts to unfold in the four months leading up to January 2025, when the new presidential term is set to begin in Venezuela. The leaders of these three countries have decades of experience dealing with problems like those embodied by the current conflict in Venezuela, including election-related challenges.
Since the July 28 election, two conflicting versions of the results have been reported: one by the country’s national electoral council, which shows incumbent President Nicolás Maduro winning by nine percentage points; the other by the Venezuelan opposition, with Edmundo González winning by a 37-point margin.
The opposition has published thousands of purported tally sheets that appear to support their claim; Venezuela’s electoral authority has yet to publish a detailed breakdown of results. Without these detailed results, it is impossible to independently verify the announcement of a Maduro victory by Venezuela’s authorities.
As CEPR noted prior to the election, neither the government nor the opposition was likely to accept the other’s victory, with both sides having valid reasons to challenge the fairness of the vote. The report notes that while “much attention has been given to the challenges that Venezuela’s opposition has faced ahead of the election, there has been scant discussion of the impact of broad sanctions imposed by the United States and some of its European allies and how these have made it virtually impossible to have a free and fair, or democratic election at this time.”
The sanctions influence the election because of the massive destruction that they have caused, estimated at more than that of the economic collapse of the United States’ Great Depression. They have also caused at least tens of thousands of deaths– which clearly reduce the incumbent’s chance of re-election. Perhaps even more importantly, millions of Venezuelan voters have been aware that these lethal sanctions would be likely to continue if they voted to re-elect the current government.
While the U.S. has shown some tentative support for cooperation with these countries, its commitment remains uncertain, and could change after US elections take place. The report shows that Washington’s 25 years of US intervention in Venezuela as well as “[t]he history of just the past two decades of US foreign policy in the hemisphere” would make “any rational observer wary of Washington’s potential role in a multilateral effort to resolve a political crisis, especially one in which it is already deeply committed to supporting one side against the other.”
The report notes that “Snapping back to prior, failed policies” will not help resolve the conflict and “will certainly cost many lives, and will cause much additional suffering.”
For all of these and other reasons, the report emphasizes that it is especially important to support the efforts of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to help bring about a negotiated solution to the conflict. The leaders of these three countries “have decades of experience dealing with the problems embodied by the current conflict in Venezuela, including the election-related challenges.” The US should support the diplomatic efforts unfolding in the four months leading up to January 2025, when the new presidential term is set to begin in Venezuela.
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