Lula seems ready to ditch Maduro, following “bloodbath” threats

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said on Monday he was “frightened” by remarks made by President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela about the possibility of his country experiencing a “bloodbath” should he not be re-elected in the July 28 watershed presidential election.

“Maduro has to learn that when you win, you stay; when you lose, you leave,” Lula told foreign reporters during a Monday press conference.

During a rally in Caracas on Wednesday, Mr. Maduro said: “The fate of Venezuela in the 21st century depends on our victory on July 28. If we don’t want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, a product of the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success, the greatest victory in the electoral history of our people.”

Polls have shown Mr. Maduro way behind Edmundo González, his main challenger. If the elections are free and fair (a big if), the president’s path to victory seems as narrow as it gets.

But as we showed in our Latin America Weekly newsletter, analysts in Venezuela believe that the government will not give up power unless some kind of credible offer of amnesty for Mr. Maduro is negotiated.

The opposition fears that electoral authorities are acting to confuse voters and create hurdles for Mr. González to win. One such move is the fact that more than half of polling stations nationwide (serving about 3.9 million voters) will have just one ballot box, Reuters reported. 

“The intention is very clear and should be roundly rejected: they want to manipulate and twist the desire for change by the vast majority,” Andrés Caleca, a former electoral official and opposition primary candidate, said last month on X.

The government has also heavily restricted the right to vote for the millions of Venezuelans living outside the country, who lean heavily in favor of the opposition.

Back in March, Brazilian diplomacy had expressed “concern” with the upcoming elections in Venezuela. It was the first time that the Lula administration had flinched on its stance on the neighboring country — otherwise marked by utmost support for the country’s authoritarian leader.

In October 2023, the Maduro administration pledged to hold free and fair elections. An agreement with the opposition was mediated by Norway and signed in Barbados.

Brazil congratulated Venezuela and the opposition for the agreement at the time, even though the document came months after the country’s leading opposition figure, María Corina Machado, had already been ruled ineligible to run for office by Venezuela’s comptroller general, a Maduro ally.

Lula smeared the Venezuelan opposition, comparing it to Jair Bolsonaro’s putschism, and said Venezuela knows it must hold democratic elections, which he hoped would convince the U.S. to end sanctions against the country — suggesting that any questioning of the results would be a sore loser’s cry.

The post Lula seems ready to ditch Maduro, following “bloodbath” threats appeared first on The Brazilian Report.