Martel: Democrat Foreign Policies Facilitated Venezuela’s Sham Election Crisis

The ongoing tidal wave of civil unrest in Venezuela is the result of a rigged election that President Joe Biden, through his top diplomat Secretary of State Antony Blinken, spent years pressuring the anti-socialist opposition of that country to accept — knowing well the socialist regime’s extensive history of rampant cheating.

The socialist dictatorship declared its leader, Nicolás Maduro, the “winner” of a violent and highly fraudulent presidential “election” in the early hours of Monday. Later that day, the opposition published electoral data it claimed to obtain from local polling stations that anti-Maduro leaders insisted was proof of a decisive victory for opposition rival Edmundo González.

Sunday’s was Maduro’s third fraudulent election win, after shams in 2013 and 2018, and at least the sixth sham nationwide election since he succeeded late socialist dictator Hugo Chávez. Prior elections had suffered dwindling turnout as a result of a combination of factors, most prominently the mass exodus of nearly eight million Venezuelans under socialism and the near-universal acceptance among Venezuelans that they no longer lived in a free society — and their refusal to play along with “election” charades.

This disillusion has existed for years. The 2018 presidential “election” had the lowest turnout in Venezuelan history, even by the regime’s count. In 2019, a poll found that 90 percent of Venezuelans supported a foreign military intervention to oust Maduro.

This election, however, saw more enthusiastic participation by a repressed opposition and, according to both the opposition and the Maduro regime, increased voter turnout. Public disgust with socialism was channeled away from demanding an end to the regime and towards voting in a meaningless exercise, resulting in rumbling unrest that is toppling statues of Hugo Chávez and already become deadly barely 48 hours later.

The “Bolivarian socialist” regime is first and foremost responsible for the decades of killings, rape as a weapon of repression, political incarceration, torture, and other atrocities it commits on a regular basis. But the mounting disillusion, the shards of shattered hope piercing through what little is left of the social fabric of Venezuela, and the outrage that Maduro could so nakedly do exactly what he has been doing for over a decade to stay in power lies at the feet of the White House.

President Joe Biden has implemented policies that actively empower the Maduro regime, increasing Maduro’s legitimacy and filling government coffers with ill-gotten oil profits. He deployed his top diplomat, Antony Blinken, to strongarm opposition leadership — already suffering a major credibility crisis after years of uselessness in the face of Maduro’s brutality — into accepting a deal with the devil. Blinken prioritized brokering the hosting of a “free and fair election” over any protocol that would actually ensure the elections were free and fair, resulting in the most popular politician in the country being banned from the ballot, replaced with 13 pictures of Maduro’s face.

What Maduro tried to pass off as an election in the country on Sunday was, by all reasonable measures, a disgrace. Maduro hand-picked an assortment of leftist stooges to appear on the ballot, allowing only one true opposition candidate, the elderly ex-diplomat González, to compete. Opposition parties held a primary in October that former lawmaker María Corina Machado won in a landslide, but Maduro used the packed socialist Supreme Court to invalidate the primary and ban her from the ballot.

González was allowed on the ballot, but could not in any meaningful way campaign without the routine threat of violence. Maduro thugs regularly assaulted González campaign volunteers and arrested dozens of dissidents. Many known opponents of the regime simply disappeared, the United Nations verified, before the election. Socialist thugs also blocked some highways, and fully destroyed others, to prevent Venezuelans interested in González’s campaign from attending.

The week before the election, Maduro threatened a “bloodbath” if Venezuelans did not vote his way.

In the early hours of Monday, Maduro’s National Electoral Center (CNE) announced that the dictator had “won” 51 percent to 44 percent. Machado, supporting González, rapidly rejected the results and has since claimed to possess the verified vote tallies from local voting centers proving that González won in a landslide. Her claims have prompted waves of protests in which hundreds, and potentially thousands, of Venezuelans have taken the streets and toppled some of the many statues of Chávez littering the post-socialist landscape of the country.

While abhorrent, the Venezuelan socialist regime’s spectacle this weekend was far from unpredictable. By 2018, Maduro had orchestrated five sham elections of a similar tenor in six years, including the presidential “election” that year widely accepted as a fraud that prompted the failed attempt by legitimate, but powerless, former President Juan Guaidó to wrestle power out of the iron fist of the socialists.

Any increase in income and international support for the “Bolivarian Revolution,” notably under both former President Barack Obama and under Biden, in Venezuela was immediately followed by wanton violence against dissidents, the starving out of political opposition (often literally), and an increased presence of terrorists in Venezuela, including affiliates of jihadist outfits such as Hezbollah. Similarly, targeted sanctions under former President Donald Trump that limited Maduro’s financial flexibility — making it more difficult for his elites to buy luxury properties in Miami or visit “Salt Bae”‘s restaurants — restrained his reign of terror.

Biden and his administration — including Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris, whose portfolio included Latin American issues — should have taken this precedent and interpreted it as a sign to tighten the screws on the Maduro regime, empowering legitimate opposition leaders such as Machado and limiting Maduro’s resources to brutalize them. Instead, Biden tasked Blinken to strong-arm the Venezuelan people into accepting a fraudulent election process completely under Maduro’s control.

Blinken went on a Latin America tour in summer 2022 intended to galvanize regional support for the orchestrating of a “free and fair” presidential election in Venezuela, despite the complete absence of conditions on the ground to make that possible. Opposition leaders revealed that Biden had sent representatives independently to them, as well, to convince them to participate in another fraud.

“Our strong hope for Venezuela is that the Maduro regime and the Unitary Platform [the socialist opposition] are able to pursue a dialogue that ultimately leads to the necessary conditions to have free and fair elections,” Blinken said in Colombia, meeting with socialist former guerrilla terrorist President Gustavo Petro. Blinken also stopped in Chile and Peru seeking support for his election plan during that tour.

“Our strong hope is that we will see a resumption of the dialogue, negotiations, and ultimately Venezuela returning to the path of democracy through free and fair elections,” Blinken insisted.

Shortly after this tour, Biden freed Maduro’s nephews, Efraín Antonio Campo Flores and Francisco Flores de Freitas, from American prisoners despite their conviction in a New York court on charges of attempting to smuggle 800 kilograms of cocaine into the United States. Biden also later freed Maduro’s top money man, Alex Saab, allegedly in an attempt to stem migrant flows into the U.S. southern border, despite Saab facing charges of money laundering and other improprieties.

It took a year, but U.S. pressure finally resulted in talks a year later, in October 2023, that led to the signing of the “Barbados agreements.” Brokered in the eponymous Caribbean island nation, the deal committed Maduro to hosting a “free and fair election” sometime in 2024 in exchange for an outrageously generous sanctions relief package that brought a windfall of Venezuelan oil into the international market. Venezuela is home to the world’s largest known oil reserves and its state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), is critical to fund the lavish lifestyles of the socialist elites and the deadly repression of dissidents — which is why former President Donald Trump sanctioned it in 2019.

“The United States welcomes the signing of an electoral roadmap agreement between the Unitary Platform and representatives of Nicolas Maduro,” Blinken celebrated following the signing of the Barbados agreements. “This is a concrete step toward resolution of Venezuela’s political, economic, and humanitarian crisis.”

The Maduro regime immediately used the sanctions relief to increase its oil output with the help of the world’s premier state sponsor of terrorism, Iran, and negotiate joint oil projects with Iran and neighboring Syria.

By the end of the month, Maduro’s Supreme Court had invalidated the opposition primary, enforcing the ban of Machado from holding office. Two months later, Maduro declared the Barbados agreements “mortally wounded” and replaced them with Sunday’s election sham.

The Biden administration admitted defeat slowly, only restoring sanctions on PDVSA in April, long after the damage had been done.

As in the cases of the bloodthirsty Houthi terrorists of Yemen, their patrons in Tehran, the corrupt and apathetic Nigerian government, the colonialist Russian regime, and Hindu nationalist India, Biden implemented the longstanding Democrat foreign policy in Venezuela of emboldening and enriching evil political forces in the hopes that they could be flattered and enriched into kindness. Like the Yemenis, Iranians, Nigerians, Russians, Ukrainians, and Indian Christians before them, Venezuelans must now suffer the consequence of Democrats insisting on doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

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