By Marina Menéndez Quintero on May 26, 2025 from Havana
photo: Bill Hackwell
On Tuesday, Venezuela began a new stage in the Bolivarian process, consolidated by Sunday’s resounding electoral victory.
The vote in the recent Venezuelan legislative and regional elections is another refutation of the fraud thesis put forward since the July 2024 presidential elections by the violent right wing, which, as on other occasions, opted not to participate in the contest and called for abstention. This places that sector as a self-proclaimed political pariah, without credibility, as it continues to operate “outside” Venezuela’s institutional framework.
In contrast, and for the first time in the history of Bolivarian elections—32 in total—Chavista forces have won almost all of the governorships—23 out of 24—turning the map of the nation red. Starting in January, they will occupy 82 percent of the seats in the National Assembly: a majority empowered to pass the necessary legislation for the coming term, without the opposition benches, which will also be represented in the chamber, being able to conspire against it.
The victory was not only due to the work, undoubtedly ideological and not propagandistic, carried out by the red party “door to door” during the election campaign, as the current head of the Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, recalled after the election.
The period between the presidential elections and these elections—which re-legitimize them—has demonstrated the moral weakness of those opposition leaders who, after proclaiming fraud, did not attend the Supreme Court of Justice when its Electoral Chamber called on all presidential candidates to come forward with their records, after which they left the country and sought in vain the international recognition abroad that they needed in order to isolate the government of Nicolás Maduro.
They then continued to conspire, according to reports following the dismantling of those plans through the capture of foreign mercenaries, who were arrested in time to thwart them.
Maduro’s active foreign policy during this period, his recognition in important international forums, the negotiating skills demonstrated by Caracas in the fleeting meetings with Donald Trump’s envoys, despite the continued aggressiveness of the United States, and the executive’s focus on economic and social development plans together with the social organizations that support him, should also be noted in the preamble to Sunday’s Bolivarian victory.
On the other hand, the candidacy of figures from the right who distanced themselves from the divided Democratic Unity Platform and competed in this contest is evidence that there was freedom to choose and that those who stayed away and called for abstention once again dug their own grave.
The presence in Parliament since January of the former governor of the state of Miranda and even leader of the failed coup against Chávez in April 2002, Henrique Capriles Radonski, along with other right-wing figures such as Iván Stalin González—once leader of the student movement known as “de las manitas blancas” (the white hands) because of their bourgeois ancestry—and Luis Emilio Rondón, are further evidence, if any were needed, that the Venezuelan institutional and electoral system made no exceptions.
In any case, rabble-rousers such as the right-wing María Corina Machado will try to lie again by manipulating the turnout figures in an attempt to divert attention from the unbeatable figures obtained by Chavismo. They did something similar in the July elections.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) was, as always, accurate in announcing the results. Forty-two point sixty-three percent of registered voters turned out to vote, a rate consistent with turnout in other events of this nature, as historically fewer voters turn out for regional elections than for other elections.
The day passed peacefully and gave victory to those who fought for it and won it fairly, ensuring the transition to a new stage in the Bolivarian process after overcoming the obstacles of the economic crisis imposed by the punitive measures of the United States. Therefore, the days ahead will be tackled with renewed strength.
Chávez would be proud.
Source: Juventud Rebelde, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English