“A lie is like a snowball; the more it rolls, the bigger it becomes”
Quote attributed to Martin Lutero
As the days go by, instead of retracing the path of the initial versions according to which Maduro had won the presidential election – without having shown a single proof of it – the regime has insisted on feeding its lie, making it grow to unimaginable dimensions, while sinking deeper into an unprecedented wave of repression and censorship.
On August 5, the president of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, claimed to have delivered the minutes of the presidential election to the Supreme Court of Justice. Before presiding over the CNE, Amoroso held the position of Comptroller, from which he was responsible for the administrative and unconstitutional disqualifications of several political figures, including María Corina Machado.
For its part, the Supremo Court (TSJ) was in charge, between 2018 and 2023, of the intervention of 12 political parties, whose directives were suspended and replaced by other members closer to Maduro, imposed by the same TSJ. Furthermore, on January 26, 2024, the Political Administrative Chamber of the TSJ endorsed the disqualification of María Corina Machado, “without publishing its sentence and out of time,” as stated by Acceso a la Justicia in an analysis of this event.
It is in this scenario that Maduro plays the victim and asks the TSJ to “certify” the results of the election. Thus, a non-independent body transfers the responsibility for the fate of the presidential election to another body without independence or competence to settle the controversy, while claiming to have delivered to the TSJ the minutes that have not been shown to the population.
Candidate Edmundo González refused to attend the assembly of the TSJ, claiming that he was in a state of defenselessness, given that he had been warned that if he did not attend there would be consequences and if he went and delivered the minutes, there would also be consequences. As expected, the TSJ declared González in contempt. It is worth remembering that the last time the TSJ used the figure of contempt amid a possible constitutional crisis was in 2016, when it declared the entire National Assembly (AN) of opposition majority in contempt and assumed, through a questioned sentence, the legislative functions, in what was considered, at national and international level, a blow against the legislative body.
Thus, the snowball continues to grow and has taken in its path 24 lives, thousands of people deprived of liberty and summarily prosecuted for terrorism, blocking of media and messaging applications, with the most excessive balance of repression known in Venezuela in just 2 weeks. In an attempt to give legal ground to this new level of repression, Maduro asked the National Assembly to speed up the approval of anti-fascist laws, to which the President of the National Assembly immediately responded with a call to suspend the parliamentary recess that was about to begin, in order to approve the law regulating NGOs in a second discussion on Tuesday, August 13. The discussion was suspended and resumed on August 15, and the Law on Supervision, Regularization, Action and Financing of NGOs and Social Organizations was approved unanimously in a legislature controlled by Chavismo.
In this context, the meeting of the leaders of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico with Maduro will take place, while the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court stated that “he is closely following current events and has received multiple reports on cases of violence and other complaints following the presidential elections of July 28 in Venezuela.” The international community’s ability to contain the spiraling atrocities is being tested by someone who promised a bloodbath if he lost the election. Not giving in to Maduro’s blackmail and victimization and remaining firm in the basic messages of access to the tallies, independent auditing and an end to repression must continue to be the guiding principles of international action to prevent the snowball from breaking the dam that separates us from destruction.