Caracas Chronicles

In November 2023, Elías Sayegh and Josy Fernández, mayors of El Hatillo in eastern Caracas and the nearby Las Salias, resigned from Fuerza Vecinal. Despite being co-founders of this party —which, although outside the Unitary Platform (PUD) and maintaining amicable relations with Chavismo, controls some of the country’s wealthiest municipalities— Fuerza Vecinal’s petition to suspend the October opposition primaries meant a breaking point for them. Along with Sayegh and Fernández, six other mayors, 21 municipal counselors, 29 regional representatives, and one state legislator left the party. Just five months later, both Sayegh and Fernández were barred from running for office by the Comptroller’s Office, marking the start of a crackdown on municipal opposition figures elected in 2021. 

Since then, at least seven opposition mayors have been detained, two were removed from office or forced into hiding, and several others were co-opted by the ruling PSUV. Additionally, at least two councilmembers were removed, and one was arrested—all of whom had been elected in the 2021 regional elections, where the mainstream opposition, retaking electoral participation, had to compete with nominal ‘opposition’ parties that were led by pro-system figures or had boards hijacked by the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ). 

This crackdown cut a third path in Venezuelan politics that the government itself had opened.

A bet that did not pay

Following the Supreme Tribunal of Justice’s (TSJ) nullification of the Barinas governorship election—where a candidate from a hardline opposition party had won—some observers argued that the regional elections were cementing the institutionalization of a loyal opposition within a PSUV-dominated system. This loyal opposition, like in the old PRI-dominated Mexico or in East Germany’s rubber stamp parliament, served to legitimize the regime while maintaining the appearance of democratic pluralism, yet operated within boundaries set by the ruling party.

This crackdown cut a third path in Venezuelan politics that the government itself had opened.

This “third way”, as it was described in Caracas Chronicles’ Political Risk Report back then, was “non-ideological, non-tribal, pragmatic, focused not on the abstract, vague dream of restoring democracy (…) but on taking part on every election no matter how unfair electoral conditions are (…) and campaign on the hope of economic recovery and normalization.” The oppositions’ participation would help chavismo project democratic legitimacy abroad –in elections which, for the first time since 2006, included a European Union electoral mission– needed to have sanctions lifted or relaxed. Sociologist Jeudiel Martínez, writing in this blog, went even further: “The passivity around chavismo stealing the votes in Barinas in plain daylight doesn’t only prove the total impotence of electoral fetishism, but the fact that in pragmatic, functional terms, Venezuela has no opposition left: only candidates who aren’t chavistas”.

Even former Sucre mayor Carlos Ocariz lambasted the new mayors and councilmen due to their “scandalous silence” following the approval of a centralizing municipal tax law by the Chavista-controlled 2020 National Assembly. In fact, the opposition mayors soon joined the anti-sanctions campaign, lambasted other opposition factions and even engaged in public fights with opposition leader María Corina Machado. 

The municipal opposition starts opposing 

And yet, following Machado’s skyrocketing rise during the primaries and presidential campaigns and her alluvial rallies throughout the dilapidated rural Venezuela, a good deal of the mayors and councilmembers –including from non-PUD forces– jumped into the Machadowagon. In a matter of two years, many of the “non-ideological, non-tribal, pragmatic” leaders focused on “economic recovery and normalization” were rallying up behind the most ideological and anti-system leader in the opposition’s history.  For example, Luis Pinto –the mayor of El Socorro in Guárico– went from being initially elected under the banner of El Cambio, an evangelical party led by the pro-system pastor Javier Bertucci, to joining Machado’s campaign team for the primaries in the state.

When Machado named Edmundo González Urrutia as her flagbearer, more than a dozen mayors from Táchira, Cojedes, and Trujillo –many hailing from Fuerza Vecinal or non-PUD parties like the judicially-intervened Acción Democrática, which were not supporting the PUD’s presidential candidate– endorsed the former diplomat.

The clustering of “third way” forces behind a seismic political movement led by the mainstream opposition had already happened before, when non-PUD groups scandalized by the repetition of the Barinas elections in January 2022 following TSJ’s orders supported the unitary candidate. The support of these politicians, which had not backed the unitary candidate in the first round of elections in December, allowed the opposition to claim victory with a margin of 18%: way higher than the 1% margin it got in the first round. 

When Machado named Edmundo González Urrutia as her flagbearer, more than a dozen mayors from Táchira, Cojedes, and Trujillo –many hailing from Fuerza Vecinal or non-PUD parties like the judicially-intervened Acción Democrática, which were not supporting the PUD’s presidential candidate– endorsed the former diplomat.

But, just like it had done with at least two of the former Fuerza Vecinal mayors, the government responded by having the National Electoral Council (CNE) ban many of the pro-González sitting mayors from running for office. These included not only eight mayors from Trujillo but also two opposition mayors from Nueva Esparta who had supported Machado in her tours to the island state. The process was so irregular, that some of the mayors found out they had been banned by the CNE through social media. 

By July, the mayor of El Socorro had been irregularly removed from office by Chavista forces. Similarly, two opposition councilmen from Tucupita were arbitrarily removed from office by the Chavista-controlled council after they supported Machado in her visit to Delta Amacuro. The government also proceed to co-opt some figures elected under nominally-opposition banners: including the Fuerza Vecinal mayor of Tinaco, who left his party and joined PSUV, and the originally pro-González mayor of Ortiz in Guárico who posted a video endorsing Nicolás Maduro. Nevertheless, the opposition’s campaign team soon explained, the Ortiz mayor had been “coerced.” A few days before, in fact, there had been an intent of detaining him in his office. Only the citizenry’s protests stalled the effort. The threats, according to the opposition, had forced him to endorse Maduro.

The removal of council members and the barring of mayors happened in a moment in which Chavista state forces and agencies were closing dozens of shops and arresting hundreds of service providers and activists for offering their services to the opposition leadership during its presidential campaign. 

According to Rafael Uzcátegui, human rights activist who leads the Laboratorio de Paz think tank, attacking the municipal opposition was a way of weakening “an autonomous network of associations from the places most affected by the crisis, at a time when the so-called ‘popular power’ has been retreating everywhere.”

For the government, the drift of many moderate PUD and “third way” mayors and councilmembers towards Machado’s seismic political movement represented a threat to the status quo. The government, which resorted to bans, would worsen its punitive measures towards the municipal opposition. On June 20th, Yohnny Liscano –the mayor of Ayacucho, Táchira– was detained by state security forces. He’d be the first of seven in less than two months. 

The crackdown on the municipal opposition

By mid-August, following the opposition’s rejection of the official CNE results on July 28th, at least six more mayors had been arrested or forced into exile: Jordán Sifuentes from Mejía, Sucre; Javier Oropeza from Torres, Lara; José Mosquera from Lagunillas, Zulia; Fernando Lara from Tinaquillo, Cojedes; José Leocadio Carrillo from Urdaneta, Trujillo and Rigoverto Ovallos from Costa, Táchira. While the Urdaneta and Lagunillas mayors were later liberated, Ovallos went into exile following an arrest order, while Oropeza’s office was arbitrarily taken over by a Chavista councilwoman despite him leaving a substitute after fleeing due to an arrest order. Meanwhile, the mayor of Lima Blanco, Cojedes –one of the Fuerza Vecinal mayors who endorsed González Urrutia– was forced into hiding after Chavista-sympathizer Luis Ratti accused him of promoting protests. The only opposition councilwoman in Cantaura, Beatriz Andrade, was also arrested after the elections when she was holding an official meeting in the municipal chamber. 

In other words, the crackdown on the municipal opposition is part of the wider offensive on civil society and generalized dissent in Venezuela.

“The arrests in the regions are an attempt to neutralize or intimidate local leaders, who were key in the logistical tasks of the campaign, including the conformation of electoral commandos”, Uzcátegui says. “In addition, this campaign of intimidation is functional in view of the regional elections that should take place in 2025. The opposition to chavismo is more palpable in the regions, hard hit by the crisis and migration.” For him, while the González-Machado campaign had a logic of approaching the center from the margins of the country, chavismo was rather surprised by the “de-ruralization” of its movements –as the opposition was gaining ground in old red strongholds. In response, it is seeking to disarticulate the opposition also in rural regions. 

In other words, the crackdown on the municipal opposition is part of the wider offensive on civil society and generalized dissent in Venezuela.

The crackdown and the massive fraud of July 28th also hampers the opposition’s participation in the 2025 regional elections, which could finish the marginalization of truly oppositional forces. In fact, on August 22nd, Jorge Rodríguez said that whoever didn’t abide the TSJ’s ruling recognizing the CNE’s official results wouldn’t be allowed to participate in the 2025 regional and parliamentary elections: a clear threat not only to the Unitary Platform, represented by the MUD card, but also to both its only two members parties that still control their representation on the ballot –Un Nuevo Tiempo and Movimiento Por Venezuela– and to Enrique Márquez’s coalition. 

Chavismo is conditioning municipal political life to recognizing the July 28th fraud. 

“January 10 will be a thermometer for the strategy that the different political forces will adopt in view of the regional elections. However, we are not in a scenario similar to previous regional elections, given that after the monumental disregard of the popular will, the elections themselves have been emptied of meaning”, Uzcátegui says, “The scenario of the 2018 elections could be repeated, with top sectors of political parties deciding to participate in the face of the citizens’ decision not to do so.” Meanwhile, he says, these forces will blame the pro-Machado opposition and not the government itself to justify electoral participation next year.

Chavismo is conditioning municipal political life to recognizing the July 28th fraud.

Seven years ago, historian Georg Eickhoff compared Venezuela’s opposition during a period of increasing authoritarianism and the parliamentary “loyal oppositions” of East Germany. The Communist-controlled German parties “were a mechanism for co-opting unemployed professional politicians under dictatorial conditions. They provided a secure way of life for a group of professionals who preferred disgrace to emigration, changing jobs or resistance”, Eickhoff wrote. After the creation of the National Constituent Assembly in 2017, “professional [Venezuelan] opposition politicians and employees of opposition mayors and governors have to change jobs or adapt to the dictatorship.”

In 2025 –following the crackdown on organized civil society and the hollowing-out of elections– Eickhoff’s old words might eerily sound like a prescient obituary. The end of the municipal opposition will have been consummated.