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The bare minimum the Western mainstream media could do is report accurately on Venezuela’s recent parliamentary election. Once again they have failed.

The multiparty coalition supporting Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro won 69% of ballots cast in elections for the National Assembly on December 6. While more than 100 parties took part in the contest, the majority of the opposition boycotted the vote — indeed, voter turnout was low, at 31%.

Opposition moderates still and those who called for a boycott.

Speaking on the opposition TV network Globovisión, Bernabé Gutiérrez, general secretary for one of Venezuela’s oldest political parties, Acción Democrática, and new member for the National Assembly, said: “This opposition, represented in the new parliament, will not continue the ruckus of a parallel National Assembly, although I see and have heard that there are those that will pretend to legislate and direct the country from overseas.”

He said what was missing from opposition leader Juan �ҳܲ�����ó’s team was a “Minster of Defence” — a mocking reference to that fact that, despite being recognised by the United States and its allies as the country’s legitimate head of state, �ҳܲ�����ó did not control Venezuela’s armed forces.

The Washington Post described the vote as “” — as did former Secretary of State on December 7. Yet the Post did at least concede that the election might help Maduro, potentially “deal a final blow to the US-backed campaign to force [his] ouster through economic strangulation, a popular uprising or a military coup.”

While most opposition parties did publicly state that they were not going to participate in the election, those that did participate had, by September, come under sanctions from the US Treasury Department. to Ociel Alí López — a political analyst and professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela — this included five opposition leaders who will now no longer be able to hold “accounts or properties in the US” and possibly in “allied countries”.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearing, US President Joe Biden’s Secretary of State Anthony Blinken he supports former US President Donald Trump’s policy of endorsing �ҳܲ�����ó, whilst describing Maduro as a “brutal dictator”.

A said recently that the new president had no intentions to negotiate with Maduro as “the Biden administration will stand with the Venezuelan people and their call for a restoration of democracy through free and fair elections.

US interference

While the abstention of the majority of the opposition parties received highly favourable coverage in most US media, their violence — and their US funding — was conveniently overlooked.

In a break from this norm, in July 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported that the Trump administration to “divert more than $40 million in humanitarian aid from Central America to the US-backed opposition in Venezuela”.

According to Timothy Gill, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, during the period of the Hugo Chávez (1999–2013) and Maduro (2013–present) governments, “several US government agencies furnished opposition political parties and opposition-oriented NGOs with training and financial assistance.

“This has all primarily flowed from USAID and the National Endowment for Democracy (and its associated groups),” said Gill, which “worked with political parties on … building websites, working with social media, developing political platforms, and reaching out to youth voters”

“The IRI [International Republican Institute], for instance, has continually strategised with opposition political parties and has sought to help the opposition unify against the PSUV [United Socialist Party of Venezuela]. In recent years, the Trump administration has allocated more funding for the Venezuelan opposition and the so-called interim government of �ҳܲ�����ó.

“It appears that the administration is, for example, paying for embassies abroad and for some of �ҳܲ�����ó’s travel. [US neoconservative politician] Elliott Abrams mentioned this in a press conference in . That, I’m sure, is only the tip of the iceberg.”

In Gill’s view, from the George W Bush administration (2001–09) to the present, the Venezuelan opposition has probably received in excess of US$100 million dollars from the US. The corruption of �ҳܲ�����ó and his team in search of US funds is so deep that in January even the US media on it. But despite such help, things aren’t going well for the opposition.

Speaking to after the election, two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said that the opposition today had no leader. He added that while he had backed in the past, he couldn’t “turn a blind eye to mistakes” including “[a]ttempting to overthrow the government from the Altamira overpass” — a reference to the failed military coup of April, 2019. Unmentioned by the BBC, Capriles actively in the failed against Hugo Chávez.

Foreign observers

While hard-right opposition leaders like Capriles were given considerable favourable international media coverage during the election, no effort was made to balance this even with forces less closely aligned to Washington.

Notably, the visit by some , the and , merited next to no coverage.

Making his third visit to the country, Zapatero : “Too many times this electoral system is judged without knowing the process.”

Criticising the European Union’s position towards the South American country, Zapatero said he hoped the election would see an end to the “terrible sanctions that Venezuela is facing” as he did not “agree with the government of Donald Trump” and its actions.

Former president of Ecuador Rafael Correa also made similar which, like Zapatero’s, went largely unreported.

The same could be said for a politically diverse team from Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada and the US who went to Venezuela as electoral observers.

Their declared that they had “observed the Venezuelan people’s sovereignty manifest at the polls in a democratic, free, and peaceful manner”. Rejecting the opposition’s calls for abstention from the election and “the promotion of violence and interference by external factors in Venezuelan life”, they called for dialogue and “understanding in Venezuelan society”.

The claims of such visitors are, however, crowded out by those of bodies like Organization of American States (OAS), under the of Luis Almagro.

This Washington-aligned body attacked the election as a mere fraud. Looking at such claims we might equally remember the OAS’s previous condemnation of the October 2019 presidential election in Bolivia. This was key in facilitating a against Evo Morales, though the accusations were based on specious allegations not founded in reliable data analysis.

At the time, such claims were widely hailed by outlets such as the New York Times as representative of regional opinion.

Ultimately, however, such media were forced to backtrack — and finally the evidence that no fraud had taken place.

Sanctions

Last October, the Washington Office on Latin America published a 53-page on the impact of US sanctions on Venezuela since 2017 when they were tightened under Trump.

While the report is hardly sympathetic, and makes the point that there is an “abundance of corruption cases within the Maduro government”, it stated: “Pressuring the country to run out of revenue with the argument that resources are being diverted by those in power is a radical measure that puts the lives of many Venezuelans at risk.”

Noting that oil revenue has long been used to cover the import of fuel, medicine, food (75% of which is imported) and other basic goods, the report calculates that “US sanctions have caused the Venezuelan state to lose from $17–31 billion in revenue”.

According to Alfred-Maurice de Zayas — former secretary of the United Nations Human Rights Council — US sanctions have cost the lives of more than , in particular due to restrictions on medications entering the country.

Back in Venezuela, through an exchange of emails, Joseph Castellanos and Maury Márquez — a couple in their forties who reside in Caracas with their young daughter — explained the impact of US sanctions.

Márquez claims that the sanctions have affected her life “enormously” as she no longer has the quality of life she once had. In her view, “hyperinflation in the country means you can only cover basic food costs, if that”.

While Márquez used to work in a state-run publishing house, today she contributes to her family by working in the informal economy.

Castellanos, her partner, who still works in the public sector, said: “With separated families, salaries that in most cases do not reach US$10 a month, poor public services as a result of the lack of trained personnel and imported materials, a shortage of petrol due to the same sanctions, and a long et cetera that surrounds the life of Venezuelans, parliamentary elections were held on December 6.”

Today, Venezuelan society is scarcely holding together. The fact that massive riots and protests in the country’s working-class areas have not broken out and toppled Maduro is remarkable — a legacy, perhaps, of the loyalty many may still have for the Bolivarian Revolution.

The bare minimum the mainstream media could do is report accurately on the country’s recent election and the criminal US sanctions aimed at crushing another leftist experiment in Latin America.

[Abridged from Alborada.net. Rodrigo Acuña is a contributing editor of Alborada and host of its podcast .]