By Tribuna Popular, publication of the CP Venezuela
August 7, 2025
A year has passed since the presidential elections of July 28, 2024, and the outcome leaves no room for doubt: Venezuela is experiencing one of the most profound crises of political legitimacy in its contemporary history. The abuse of electoral power and the lack of transparency not only stripped the elections of their democratic content, but also marked a turning point in the authoritarian shift of the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
Since then, the ruling elite has tried to maintain a narrative of normality (they even talk about peace), but the truth is that the power structure around Nicolás Maduro is based on two pillars: propaganda and repression. While communication laboratories fabricate an artificial image that hides the political disaster, the coercive apparatus is deployed with unprecedented intensity. Today, the police nature of the state is not an accusation, it is a slogan that the president himself wields as a prayer for salvation.
The popular protests that followed the announcement of Maduro’s supposed victory shattered the myth of massive support among the poor. It was precisely in the most impoverished neighborhoods where the first flames of discontent were ignited. It is no coincidence that the hundreds of people detained after those days were mostly precarious workers. But history teaches us that no crisis of legitimacy can be resolved through coercion: repression does not silence questions, it multiplies them.
After July 28, elections in Venezuela became an empty ritual. Yes, they are held, but under unprecedented abuse of power: parties subject to judicial intervention, electoral tickets canceled without justification, illegal disqualifications, leaders kidnapped, and open criminalization of those who defend rights, protest, or engage in political action.
Added to this scenario is an even more serious feature: the exercise of power has become highly discretionary. Invoking the Constitution is merely a rhetorical device. Far from guaranteeing rights, institutions have been reconfigured to forge a world tailored to the PSUV leadership. Everything is designed to sustain an order in which the law does not limit power, but rather adapts to its needs.
In this context, simply talking about the lack of transparency of the National Electoral Council (CNE) is insufficient. What has been imposed by the leadership headed by Elvis Amoroso is a cloak of opacity that conceals a macabre maneuver: citizens called to vote without any real possibility of choosing.
The popular response has been clear: massive abstention in the face of electoral farces that do not respect popular sovereignty. But the powers that be are tightening their grip: first, they invent concepts such as “active voters” to gloss over the paltry turnout, and now they issue regulations prohibiting calls for abstention. If that is not enough, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) enters the scene to rule that elections without results are indeed valid. Anyone who dares to question this absurdity runs the risk of being prosecuted, as happened to lawyer María Alejandra Díaz, who was suspended for legally supporting a request by the Popular Democratic Front demanding that the CNE publish the detailed results of the presidential elections.
Over the past year, a model of authoritarian administration has been consolidated. Loyalty to Maduro—that “whatever Nicolás says” turned into a catechism—rests on a system of rewards and punishments: fear of punishment and hope for reward. Patronage has replaced adherence to a project that 25 years ago was presented as emancipatory. Today, the symbols of revolutionary transformation are shamelessly manipulated to legitimize the dismantling of wages and accuse those who demand collective bargaining agreements of “treason.”
A year after those elections, Venezuela faces an undeniable truth: the country is hijacked by a power that, having lost popular support, chose to replace legitimacy with force. Given this scenario, the challenges for revolutionary, popular, and authentically democratic organizations are enormous. The first, and perhaps most urgent, is to promote new forms of popular resistance that strengthen the struggles for the restoration of the Constitution and the reconstruction of the rule of law.
The banners of the communists are clear: demand the resignation of the Electoral Council rectors; the Supreme Court’s annulment of judicial interventions against political parties; the approval of a general amnesty for the hundreds of workers, young people, students, and political activists unjustly imprisoned; and the immediate call for new elections with full democratic guarantees.
