IN VENEZUELA THE CRUSHING VICTORY

OF THE CHAVIST NICOLAS MADURO

On the occasion of the regional elections which were held on Sunday, November 21, 2021, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won an overwhelming victory: out of 23 governors, 20 are Chavistas. The opposition even lost 2, going from 5 to 3 governors. The other results - namely the names of the 334 mayors and more than 2,500 councilors - have not yet been released, with the exception of Caracas.

Abstention was the main figure of the day, with 58.2% of voters who did not come to the polling stations.

And for good reason: if the regional Sunday marked the return of the opposition parties after the boycott of the previous elections, in particular the presidential election of 2018 and the parliamentarians of 2020, the opposition came back very divided on the attitude to adopt for this ballot.

"The question is whether, by voting, we accelerate the fall of the regime or if, on the contrary, we postpone it because we legitimize it", asked Ms. Machado Sunday morning in a tweet.

The radical right, embodied by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, continued to advocate abstention while Juan Guaido, an opposition figure on the international scene and interim president since January 2019, said he would not vote. Venezuelans, confused by the contradictory speeches of the opposition leaders, therefore responded by abstaining largely for the regional and local elections of Sunday, November 21, 2021.

The conditions seemed, however, to be met for a relatively democratic confrontation between the opposition and the Chavist power.

Indeed, the National Electoral Council (CNE) had been renewed by integrating two opposition rectors out of five. The government had accepted the arrival of observers from the European Union, the UN and the Carter Foundation. Most of the disqualified opposition parties had been rehabilitated. The most emblematic political prisoners had been freed.

But the opposition failed to agree to present a united front against the adversary, personal ambitions having prevailed.