The Economist: Can Nicolás Maduro be stopped from stealing Venezuela’s election?

                                                              Photograph: AP

THERE COMES a moment in a country’s descent into dictatorship when a heavily armed regime tries to force millions of people to accept that black is white, bad is good and losers are winners. By so blatantly stealing the presidential election on July 28th, President Nicolás Maduro has ensured that for Venezuela that moment is now .

By every measure except the regime’s, the vote was won soundly by Edmundo González. He is an avuncular former diplomat around whom the opposition coalesced after Mr Maduro barred the most impressive opposition leader, María Corina Machado, from running. Exit polls and parallel counts from swathes of separate polling stations all show Mr González winning, with more than 65% of the vote. Yet after a suspicious delay, the electoral authority, run by regime lackeys, announced that victory belonged narrowly to Mr Maduro.

During his 11 years in power, Mr Maduro has grown ever more anti-democratic. This time his regime invented millions of votes to steal a win. The scale of the fraud far outstrips Venezuela’s past sham elections. Venezuela is now reminiscent of the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the world’s poorest countries, where millions of votes were fabricated in 2018 to secure the election for the loser. Congo’s ruse succeeded. Mr Maduro’s must not.

Whether it does depends primarily on ordinary Venezuelans. So blatant is the steal that they may refuse to accept it. Protests have broken out across the country, including in places once seen as bastions of the regime. At least 20 people have died. Caracas, the capital, has been a din of pots and pans. Crowds have toppled at least six statues of the late Hugo Chávez, whom Mr Maduro succeeded in 2013 as leader of the socialist-themed “Bolivarian revolution”.

Venezuelans are also fed up with the ruination of their country in a quarter of a century of strongman rule. Under Mr Maduro, hyperinflation soared (today, inflation is “only” 50%). In the eight years to 2021, the economy shrank by three-quarters. Corruption is rife. Dissidents disappear into dungeons. A quarter of the population—7m people—has fled abroad.

Alas, the army is blocking change, and to get it to abandon Mr Maduro and uphold the constitution’s electoral process will be hard. Mr Maduro relies on Cuban intelligence to keep officers in line. The opposition should strive to show in irrefutable detail that the election was stolen. On the back of that, it should stage large, peaceful demonstrations. Many foot-soldiers, whose own families share in the current hardship of Venezuelans, are not necessarily loyal to the regime.

The outside world can do its bit, too. Without full, credible election data, Western powers should reject the official results outright. Failure to provide such data should mean renewed economic sanctions and pursuit by the International Criminal Court for potential crimes against humanity. The West should also use individual sanctions against Mr Maduro’s inner circle, including his generals, whose families luxuriate in plush hotels in Madrid and elsewhere.

More crucial will be the role of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in next-door Brazil. An erstwhile ally of chavismo, Lula is now frustrated. He, too, has demanded the release of election data. Privately, and ideally with the backing of the left-wing governments in Colombia and Mexico, he should be much tougher and tell Mr Maduro that if he clings on, his usual friends will disown him—and impose sanctions on his family.

The world has one last thing to offer: a safe way out for Mr Maduro and his closest cronies to a comfortable life by a Brazilian or Caribbean beach, possibly with immunity from prosecution. That would outrage those who want to see Mr Maduro face justice at The Hague. But it is a price worth paying to avoid bloodshed and start putting Venezuela back together.