(Bloomberg) -- The energized Venezuelan opposition movement that could have unseated Nicolás Maduro in this year’s presidential election has scattered to the wind.
Around 100 leaders and many more activists from the Unitary Platform have fled the country since Maduro unleashed an intense wave of repression after his disputed win on July 28. Edmundo González, who the US now calls president-elect, left for Spain in September. The popular opposition leader María Corina Machado has been in hiding since early August, allegedly within Venezuelan borders — though the government says she’s in Colombia.
It’s all because Maduro has made his enemies fear for their lives. His detractors’ homes were spray-painted with the letter X and visited by security forces officers under the so-called knock-knock operation. At least 25 arrest warrants against opposition leaders were issued in the first month after the election. Dozens of passports were canceled. Many were publicly named and threatened on state television. The situation reached a deadly climax in late October, when Apure state opposition leader Edwin Santos was found dead after being detained by security forces for two days, according to his party. The government never acknowledged his arrest, and said he died in a motorbike accident.
The ruling party and its allies have also been considering several laws that ultimately seek to eliminate all trace of the opposition within the country. Maduro’s swearing-in is set for Jan. 10, with parliamentary and regional elections for governors, mayors and other lawmakers due later in the year.
“On July 29, Maduro put an end to the electoral system as we knew it,” said a professor at Spain’s University of Navarra and political consultant Carmen Beatriz Fernández. “If elections take place next year,” she added, they will be strictly controlled and “each candidate must have the blessing from the ruling party to enter the ring.”
In the most oppressive moment of his autocratic rule yet, Maduro is well on his way to get what he’s wanted: a Venezuela with no one to challenge his authority. Even with the US refusing to recognize his presidency, it won’t make much of a material difference given the once-fervent opposition is a shell of its former self. The government didn’t reply to a request for comment.
Had things been different, Viviana Save Torres would have considered running in opposition primaries for any of next year’s elections. Instead, the party organizer is thousands of miles away from her home after she was targeted by the government. She requested that Bloomberg News not publish her location for fear of her safety.
The 34-year-old helped arrange the opposition primaries last year and coordinated González’s campaign in her home state of Trujillo. González, a former diplomat, ran with the support of Machado, who was banned from running for office. Having her help on the hustings was key: Machado won the opposition primaries with 93% of the vote, and Venezuelans came to view her as almost a messianic figure who promised to overhaul the economy and reunite families separated by the biggest diaspora in the Western Hemisphere. The opposition ultimately provided voting tabulations that showed González likely won nearly 70% of the presidential vote.
But for Save, the intimidation started in the weeks before the election, with security forces parked outside her home. As a precaution, she changed her location and even her car up to three times a day.
Everything got far worse in the days after the vote. The ruling party governor in Trujillo shared wanted signs of Save and six other local opposition leaders on his social media account. Security forces found where they were staying the next day and arrested one of them. Save managed to escape while the officers were questioning neighbors.
By Aug. 4, she learned the government had issued an arrest warrant against her, and she decided to leave. She didn’t even have time to tell her family. That night, she crossed the border to Colombia at 2:00 am on a motorbike. She was barefoot, wearing only her pajamas, and pretended to be sick.
“It was a hell of a week,” she said. “When I arrived in Cucuta I felt relieved.”
Unfortunately, her journey was far from over.
The Trujillo governor addressed her on regional television shortly after. He said that the government knew where she was, that she would be found and deported back to Venezuela.
Save barely went outside in Colombia, too scared to even go to the grocery store. So she left.
“This whole wave of terror is the reaction of defeated people who want to remain in power,” she said in a phone interview. “My call is to the international community: You cannot be complacent.”
While González is the most prominent leader who has left so far, there are many others like Save who were integral to the opposition’s ability to reach its supporters and run a campaign against the ruling socialists. There’s also those who served as witnesses to the vote count and polling station staffers, who have also received direct threats from Maduro’s security forces.
Of course, some remain in hiding within Venezuelan borders. And there are Machado’s six close aides who remain holed up in the Argentine embassy in Caracas, now under Brazil’s control. Over the weekend, the opposition said the government had resumed a siege on the embassy by cutting off power and and setting up signal blockers.
The onslaught has been particularly harsh on Machado’s Vente Venezuela party, but it has happened to others before. Most of the leaders of once-powerful opposition groups Popular Will and Justice First are in exile, and some of their most prominent leaders have faced prison.
Many who have fled in the aftermath of the July vote declined to share their testimonies for fear that any clue of their identity could lead to retaliation. Another young opposition leader, who requested anonymity, left after an arrest warrant was issued and security forces broke into his home. The individual had helped run the opposition primaries in 2023, and like Save hoped to run for office next year.
The situation is expected to worsen in the coming weeks, with Maduro’s government likely to approve electoral reforms that seek to exclude the opposition and its parties ahead of a Dec. 15 deadline.
Simultaneously, it is investigating more than 300 people, mostly politicians, for what it says was the theft of Citgo Petroleum Corp., the US arm of its state-owned oil company. In 2019, the Venezuelan government lost control over Citgo to an ad hoc board run by the opposition. The company is now being auctioned in the US.
“I hope all those involved in the brazen Citgo robbery are captured and prosecuted,” Maduro said on the Oct. 28 episode of his weekly TV show.
Maduro’s latest wave of persecution doesn’t seem to be over yet.
He is also promoting a law to counteract the US Bolivar Act, contemplating sanctions such as life-long bans on holding public office, trials in absentia and 30-year prison sentences for those supporting actions against Venezuela. The legislation was promoted by Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, who is president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for national security advisor.
The reverberations from that and electoral reforms will be felt for years to come.
“While some opposition forces will probably participate in the elections regardless, it’s hard to imagine the opposition staying fully unified in its approach to the election after July’s blatant fraud,” said Eurasia Group analyst Risa Grais-Targow.
“It’s always in Maduro’s interest to have a divided and demoralized opposition, especially heading into a vote.”
©2024 Bloomberg L.P.