‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.’

— Elon Musk, July 25, 2020, Twitter

ONCE again, as in 2002, Venezuela has been the victim of a combined media and diplomatic coup attempt, but this time with the added element of organised crime and a cyber-attack.

Millions of eligible voters cast their electronic ballots before the presence of more than 635 international witnesses including electoral experts of the United Nations, the African Union, and electoral staff of 65 countries. How many international witnesses are allowed for the USA or Canadian elections? None.

Nicolás Maduro was re-elected with 51.2 per cent of votes (5,150,092 votes), and the far-right candidate Edmundo González lost with 44.2 per cent of votes (4,445,978 votes). The other 8 opposition leaders received 4.6 per cent of the total votes cast. This is the statistically irreversible results given out by the constitutional Electoral Authority on election day, 28 July 2024, having examined and audited 80 per cent of the votes. These results were audited 16 times.

However, the rest of the 20 per cent votes have not yet (at the writing of this article) been released because of a massive cyber-attack. The elements of the electronic system that transmit the results to the central point was hacked over a hundred times in a most sophisticated manner that was traced to North Macedonia.

The Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, named as responsible for this cyber-attack: Lester Toledo, Leopoldo López, and M Corina Machado. Furthermore, President Maduro implicated Elon Musk, considering him a far-right fanatic who has the technology to pull an attack like this and has many times denigrated Venezuela. It is alleged that Musk supported the supposed ‘humanitarian’ invasion of Venezuela through Colombia in 2019. He famously said ‘We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.’ Musk must desire Venezuela’s lithium, apart its oil and gold.

‘Ironically, in the USA there is no constitutional or other law that demands that election results be declared on Election Day. In fact, in that supposed beacon of democracy, for much of the 19th Century it took days if not weeks to the winner to be declared.’ And much more recently:

— In 2000, Bush won the presidency over Al Gore with only 537 votes; there was a delay of 37 days before the results were released and was ultimately decided by the US Supreme Court.

— In 2021, Biden won over Trump with 51.3 per cent of votes, (almost exactly as Maduro has won now), Trump obtaining 46.8 per cent. There was a delay of four days before the final results were given out and only certified by the Electoral College after 33 days. Trump launched 63 lawsuits contesting the results and still insists they were bogus.

Yet today, like a pack of vicious hyenas, the fascist far right — and not so far right — nations and NGOs are howling for Venezuela to release the detailed results immediately. The implication being that there is some sort of fraud or hidden trick. They DEMAND that the Electoral Authority release the remaining votes, which the world should know are not little pieces of paper in a cardboard box. In Venezuela the vote is done electronically, the paper trail is only an added security measure to show that someone has duly voted.

President Maduro has formally asked the Venezuelan Supreme Court to settle any discrepancy about the vote, just as George Bush asked of the US Supreme Court in 2020.

Many of us who analyze the Venezuelan situation predicted it earlier: the far right, fascist group led by M Corina Machado and her puppet candidate in Edmundo Gonzalez, had no electoral intention. Clue: unlike other candidates from the opposition, they refused to sign the agreement among candidates to respect the results and reject any violence after the results came in. Because that is exactly what they planned. Even before the results were in Machado was telling her formidable social media networks that Gonzalez had overwhelmingly won the election.

We wondered why Machado insisted on travelling the country to campaign. Now the Attorney General has found out why: under the cover of campaigning, she was paying off bands of real criminals she grouped in what she called ‘comanditos’ (little commands). These were common criminals trained in Colombia, with the help of the Colombian narco ex-presidents of Alvaro Uribe and Duque, and gangs of organized crime, who were paid up to $150 a day to burst on to the scene the day after the elections. There was a clear plan with strategic targets laid out for every “comandito”. It was also discovered that a great number of them were trained terrorists who arrived in Venezuela under the cover of Venezuelans migrants who were returned by plane from the USA.

Images have been flashed these past few days around the world of individuals setting fires and burning tires who are portrayed invariably as ‘the people’ rejecting the fraud of the elections. In fact, ‘the people’, whether Chavistas or opposers, peaceful people in the great majority, were snug in their homes, having nothing to do with this terrorism. What did these supposed freedom fighters do? They looted, burned and destroyed, stores, schools, clinic, food warehouses, plazas, electricity plants, PSUV headquarters, police stations, water plants, and destroyed statues.

They injured 77 members of the police and armed forces, killing one officer by a bullet to his neck, not to mention the many social leaders dragged out of their homes and assaulted. In each area they had lists of the social community leaders identified with Bolivarianism, attacked and set fire to their houses and physically beat them up, women included, threatening to kill them and anyone in the town that supported the government. The government has set a special fund to help these victims.

These criminals had a specific plan. They were trained, armed, and received part of their pay in drugs. The blood tests done on every one of those caught show the presence of drugs. In certain areas they combined with organized bands of narco-paramilitary. The overall plan was to knock out the electricity supply to 10 states, create chaos, attack and march to Miraflores (the main government house) and capture or kill the president and prepare the way for foreign intervention.

How do we know all this? Firstly, because the terrorists are being rounded up, alive, without killing any one of them and they are talking. The terrorists aren’t fighting for any ideology or democracy, they are craven cowards that assault defenseless people, but when caught, fall on their knees crying and telling everything they know to the authorities. And because today:

— There are security cameras everywhere, and it seems everybody has a phone camera to catch their horrible deeds.

— There is a real Attorney General, not a vile traitor as before.

— There are now anti-terrorist laws that were previously missing to enable such violence to be dealt with through the courts.

There is a great difference today from the street violence of 2015 y 2017, ‘guarimbas’ images of which were flashed around the world to convey that Venezuela was in chaos and should be ‘intervened’. At that time, Venezuelans watched disgusted and astounded as the violent criminals were never arrested for assaults, arson and deaths. The then Attorney General, Luisa Ortega, who spent years destroying the institution, gave strict orders that these street criminals were not to be arrested because they were ‘exercising their democratic right.’ It turned out she was a mercenary traitor piling up millions of dollars the CIA gave her and is now living in great luxury in the USA where she fled when her crimes were discovered.

Following these events the National Assembly passed modern anti-terrorist laws that now include these heinous crimes against the peace, which the Constitution did not have when it was first written in 1999. Now there will be no impunity; so far there are 1,062 arrested who will go to trial. They are confessing readily with practically no promptings. It is to the great credit of the Venezuelan police and military that they have not caught these terrorists by shooting them — as it might happen in other countries which will remain nameless. No bodies, no dead terrorists: all captured alive up to now.

What would the governments of the USA, Canada or Europe do if bands of armed people set fires, assaulted and shot officials and members of the public, and terrorised their towns and cities? For sure they would be caught in a heartbeat and could very well end up being shot on sight.

President Maduro has said: we have seen this film before. The Bolivarian government under Chávez and Maduro has had since 1999, had 31 elections, and always the extreme right opposition has yelled fraud. That is, they recognize the elections when they have gained places in the National Assembly, state governments and mayoralties. Very convenient: if they win, the elections are legitimate, if they lose, they are a fraud. This has happened over and over again but the international media never seem to pick up on this or do not want to.

We are in the presence of an attempt of the international fascist far right and the CIA to overthrow the government of Venezuela with a massive disinformation and denigration campaign to justify illegal sanctions and foreign intervention in the country.

The checkered past and crimes of Machado, poster girl of the far right, is never mentioned, her involvement in coups, her promotion of street violence in the past, her asking the USA for sanctions and military invasion against Venezuela, and right now, her collaboration with criminal gangs and narco-paramilitary groups are never mentioned. Her puppet, Edmundo González, was involved in the logistics and financing of the death squads in El Salvador’s civil war. Their hands are tainted with blood.

But this is another universe from the one in 2015 and 2017. Venezuela is strong and prepared. Its economy has diversified and grown, despite the sanctions. It no longer depends exclusively on the US oil market – the whole world wants its oil. Even the USA needs Venezuelan oil for its refineries in Louisiana and Texas to keep the price of gasoline down in a crucial presidential election year.

The spectre that arises for the for the West is that their chickens have come home to roost: after decades of denigrating and harming Venezuela with a vicious hybrid war, Venezuela has turned to the East for its friends and allies. Russia and China have stood by Venezuela and its electoral process; Turkey, Iran, India, OPEC, and soon the Non-Aligned nations will also rally to its side as it is made clear that the purpose of the far right was not to win an election but to provoke a coup. And the ‘piéce de resistance’ is that BRIC, considering Venezuela a strategic partner, is poised to welcome it as a full member. This will open many more opportunities for Venezuelan development than Europe, the USA and Canada have done and who have treated Venezuela so badly for so long.

Let us rejoice in the triumph of the Venezuelan people and may they live in peace, secure in their own sovereignty.

CounterPunch.org, August 2. María Páez Victor is a Venezuelan-born sociologist living in Canada.