Venezuela’s Defeated Ruling Party Riven by Conflict and Scorn

There they were, two of the gray-haired confidants of Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s late leftist leader, voicing their indignation at the government bumbling that led to Sunday’s stinging electoral defeat of his United Socialist Party.

“We are facing a disaster,” said Héctor Navarro, a former cabinet minister. “This is not the time to act like an ostrich.”

But in the middle of the news conference on Wednesday, with dozens of journalists jammed into a dingy meeting room in a downtown hotel, a shrill siren wailed and in burst a band of agitators, some in the red shirts of Mr. Chávez’s die-hard supporters.

“You are traitors to the revolution!” shouted one man.

“Rats! You are sewer rats!” shrilled another.

And they began to chant the name of President Nicolás Maduro.

Handed its biggest setback at the ballot box in 17 years — with the opposition winning control of the National Assembly for the first time, and by a wide margin — Chavismo, the movement founded by Mr. Chávez, has turned inward to attack its own.

“This type of defeat creates a lot of internal tensions,” said Margarita López Maya, a historian. “Chavismo does not have much capacity to process this type of conflict. It’s not used to that. It doesn’t have a real democratic character or disposition for debate or tolerating dissidents.”

In his last televised speech to the nation in December 2012, Mr. Chávez called on his followers to preserve the movement’s unity above all else.

Yet since his death the following March, after a long battle with cancer, the top levels of government have increasingly been split among rival factions — a splintering that the election debacle seems likely to widen.

“Chávez was in charge,” said Jorge Giordani, the late president’s longtime planning minister and economic guru, who spoke at the news conference with Mr. Navarro. “Now everyone is in charge. Because there is a crisis of power.”

He said that each faction inside the government was looking to defend its own interests “with their knives between their teeth.”

He warned that things would get worse after the election. “There are even more groups!” he shouted. “Because no one can stand it anymore!”

After the Maduro supporters burst in, Mr. Giordani walked down a back staircase, through a kitchen and into a restaurant of the hotel where the news conference took place. One man called for a broom to bar the restaurant’s doors to protect Mr. Giordani. Then he was shepherded out a back door and into the street where he met up with Mr. Navarro. Both men, leftist icons in their time, were fired from the government after Mr. Maduro was elected to replace Mr. Chávez.

They are among a small number of former officials who have openly criticized Mr. Maduro’s leadership — and been ostracized for doing so. Mr. Navarro was kicked out of the top ranks of the United Socialist Party for defending Mr. Giordani after he had released a letter critical of the government.

On Tuesday, neither of them mentioned Mr. Maduro by name, although they repeatedly appeared to allude to him in their criticism.

They accused the government of widespread corruption and nepotism, and Mr. Navarro said that he and Mr. Giordani had repeatedly warned that Mr. Chávez’s movement was headed in the wrong direction.

But to hear Mr. Maduro talk, Chavismo’s historic losses were not his fault.

The president was praised for going on television immediately after the initial results were announced early Monday to accept his party’s defeat — the opposition won a commanding two-thirds of the seats in the National Assembly. But since then he has done virtually nothing to suggest that he accepts responsibility for the loss or intends to work with the opposition-controlled Assembly, which is to be sworn in Jan. 5.

His tone has turned ominous. In a speech outside the presidential palace on Wednesday, Mr. Maduro cast the opposition victory as a victory for “the fascist right wing,” with Mr. Chávez’s leftist revolution on the other side. “Either we get out of this quagmire through the route of revolution or Venezuela will enter into a great conflict that will affect all of Latin America and the Caribbean,” he said.

The night before, on his weekly television program, he outlined a series of steps he would take to block the incoming legislature from pursuing its agenda.

He vowed to sign a decree barring the firing of public employees for the next three years and said he would block the incoming lawmakers from freeing political prisoners like Leopoldo López, a political party leader who was sentenced to 13 years in prison for his role in antigovernment protests last year.

The election hinged on the nation’s disastrous economy, with triple-digit inflation, a deep recession, shortages and long lines to buy food and other basics.

But rather than acknowledge errors in government policy, Mr. Maduro has blamed the defeat on what he has called an economic war waged against the government by shadowy capitalist enemies. That is a continuation of the party’s main message during the campaign, which failed to persuade voters.

And he has continued the scare tactics used during the campaign, accusing the opposition of planning to revoke a law protecting workers’ rights and to eliminate social programs — which the incoming lawmakers have denied they intend to do.

Rather than propose changes to economic policy, Mr. Maduro suggested on Tuesday that the problem was that the party had not gotten its message across, and he said he would print and distribute up to three million posters of Mr. Chávez to cheer up his followers.

But there were more menacing signs as well.

“I ask anyone who is thinking of holding a press conference, think of the morale of the people,” Mr. Maduro said during his Tuesday program, apparently a reference to the news conference called for the next day by Mr. Giordani and Mr. Navarro. Then he stared and pointed into the camera and said: “That’s for you. He knows who I’m taking about. Don’t go dividing the people.”

He said he had doubts about whether to continue a housing program because some of the people who had received government-built apartments were “celebrating and dancing over the opposition victory.”

There were other moments that seemed to reflect pure pique.

Appearing on Mr. Maduro’s television program, Diosdado Cabello, the current head of the National Assembly, said he would transfer the ownership of a television station and a radio station operated by the Assembly to the employees who work there. The move was meant to prevent the incoming lawmakers from taking over the stations, which currently operate as blatant propaganda arms for the socialist party and the Maduro government.

Mr. Maduro also announced that he had signed a decree to transfer to a foundation ownership of the Caracas fort where Mr. Chávez’s tomb is on display and which has been converted into a shrine to the leader — to keep the new Assembly from trying to close it.

At one point during the program, Mr. Maduro, his vice president, the defense minister and a group of uniformed military officers all stood around Mr. Chávez’s tomb with their hands resting palms down on its stone surface, in an unsettling image that evoked a séance.