Venezuela 2013-2025: Crisis, Elections, and the Struggle for Legitimacy

Context

Since mid-2013, when Nicolás Maduro assumed the leadership of the state and government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, the Bolivarian regime has managed to maintain power amid a crisis.

Faced with a complex economic situation, a GDP decline of more than 50%, elections lacking proper democratic guarantees that generated questionable legitimacy, and an increasingly organized opposition capable of capitalizing on the weaknesses and errors of Hugo Chávez’s government, the Bolivarian regime’s stance of entrenching itself in politics and ideology—avoiding any negotiation with the opposition and radicalizing its narrative and actions—has been a constant and unproductive approach for society and its various actors.

This type of behavior, where ideological radicalization and contempt for the adversary are permanent, creates a need for change and renewal in any society.

Various national and international political actors have sought multiple opportunities for negotiation and dialogue with the Bolivarian regime. Notable examples include initiatives launched by the regime itself in 2014, Vatican-mediated dialogues in 2016, conversations in the Dominican Republic in 2017, dialogue rounds in Norway and Barbados in 2019, and dialogue tables in Mexico in 2023. However, the regime never reached political agreements; on the contrary, it sabotaged negotiations and further radicalized its actions, going so far as to hold more than 900 political prisoners in detention centers that flagrantly violate human rights, international criminal law, and Venezuelan legislation.

Adding to these actions are various events linking the Bolivarian regime to drug trafficking and connections with international criminal organizations such as the FARC and ELN, as well as political alignments with regimes that clearly violate civil rights and international law, such as Iran. These connections show the regime’s clear intention to systematically subvert and violate the international legal framework and refuse to abide by the rule of law.

The consequences of a regime that exercises power outside the rule of law generate high-impact national and international effects, including:

Destruction of the nation’s productive and economic system: By ignoring the rule of law, the regime destroys investor confidence, prevents economic growth, and devastates the national economy.

Mass exodus: Laws are the norms that protect citizens from the authoritarian exercise of power. By not complying with them, the government forces people to flee to safer environments. Over 8 million Venezuelans have had to leave the country in search of better living conditions.

Increase in poverty and crime: With no economic activity and a massive exodus of citizens, those remaining in Venezuela live in extreme conditions, without adequate public services (water, electricity, food, medicine, hospitals, schools), suffering a decline in quality of life. This leads to higher poverty rates and an increase in illegal activities (drug trafficking, prostitution, etc.) as people try to survive in a market lacking sufficient goods and services.

International impact: Countries receiving Venezuelan migrants, mainly neighboring nations, do not have the capacity to absorb such a significant number of people. Regardless of the quality of migration, the infrastructure for public services is insufficient to allow migrants to live and thrive. Additionally, citizens in host countries experience a decline in the quality of these services, generating social conflicts with unpredictable consequences.

In conclusion, a regime that, in its drive to maintain power outside the rule of law, depresses the economy, forces its citizens into exile, and frames all governance through ideological discourse—using external scapegoats to justify its inefficiency—combined with the inability to negotiate domestically and internationally, condemns society to misery, transforms the country into an ochlocracy, and harms the surrounding region.

With a broader view of the situation, we must evaluate ways to resolve it. Primarily, internally, and if no real change or willingness to return to the path of the rule of law and democracy is achieved, coercive measures should be considered to push the regime to evaluate its continuity and seek negotiation.

The national solution: more democracy!

Opposition organizations, after numerous dialogue initiatives, never obtained a real commitment from the regime to comply with the rules established by the Republic.

Therefore, the most valuable measure in a democracy was sought: to demonstrate the need for change and obtain legitimacy from the people.

The Bolivarian regime has always relied on electoral processes to show its democratic character. Regardless of the veracity or plausibility of pre-2024 elections, they were indispensable to maintaining its narrative—that “we do what we do because the people have chosen us.” Elections have always been the foundation of the regime’s legitimacy. Through manipulated democracy, the Bolivarian regime considers its actions to be those of the people because the people elected them. A modern version of Louis XIV’s famous phrase, “I am the state,” becomes in the Bolivarian regime, “We are the people.”

By 2023, it became clear that a strategy was needed to show that the regime’s legitimacy was undermined and that it no longer represented the people. During the Barbados and Mexico talks, it was agreed that both the regime and opposition organizations would contest the October 2024 elections, an invaluable opportunity to measure legitimacy and support in Venezuelan society.

The Venezuelan opposition began organizing in late 2023, holding primaries among its actors to select the leader who would represent the social desire for change and renewal.

Despite numerous barriers and obstacles imposed by the Bolivarian regime to undermine legitimacy, María Corina Machado emerged as the indisputable leader of the Venezuelan opposition and candidate to challenge Nicolás Maduro for the presidency.

In 2024, the regime carried out countless actions contrary to law and the Barbados agreement. It used administrative maneuvers to politically disqualify Machado from participating in the elections, aiming to disorient the opposition and provoke protests to discredit them. However, the opposition’s organizational capacity prevailed, allowing Machado to select her representative, Edmundo González Urrutia, a former career ambassador and little-known figure in Venezuelan politics, to run in her place. This gave the Bolivarian regime a false sense of victory, believing that by removing the well-known candidate from the race, the new candidate would not capitalize on potential electoral success.

This political change did not disorient the Venezuelan opposition; their campaign plan was already established, and they simply executed it and measured themselves electorally.

At this stage, the Bolivarian regime continued violating the rule of law. Blocking land routes, prohibiting opposition leaders from flying within the country, and threatening any establishment that provided goods or services to opposition organizations were constant. Nevertheless, highly creative solutions circumvented the regime’s maneuvers, and campaign events were held in numerous cities and towns across the country.

This milestone demonstrates that the regime does not hold all the levers of power, and even within the state apparatus, citizens were willing to collaborate with the opposition. For the regime, maintaining the campaign until October would be disastrous, as it would increasingly reveal its political weakness and inability to control the state, leading to an electoral defeat impossible to hide or manipulate. Therefore, in a desperate maneuver, they moved the election date to July 28, 2025, three months earlier than planned.

Even so, the opposition remained organized with a foolproof plan to demonstrate its victory.

On July 28, 2025, Venezuelans went to the polls to choose their candidate in elections without any guarantees, with a state that does not respect the law and has all resources to manipulate the results and total control over the media.

The results are known worldwide. Thanks to an exemplary and unique organization of society, leveraging technology and the capacity of each individual to contribute to the common good, over 70% of the electoral records from Venezuela’s National Electoral Council machines are now safeguarded at the Central Bank of Panama. These records demonstrate the victory of Edmundo González Urrutia with 70% of the votes, showing the broad societal desire for change.

This step is crucial to understanding the beginning of the end of a regime. It has been proven that the Bolivarian regime had lost its legitimacy, and nothing could justify any action it took afterward; it only remained to obey the law and respect the democratic will of the citizens.

However, the regime continued its course, violating the law and using state mechanisms to invalidate the popular will, employing the judiciary to endorse results that were neither audited nor recognized by international observers.

The Second Part of this article reflects on the consequences of looking the other way in the face of violations of the rule of law, and how even the proposed solutions create new challenges.

Finally, the Third Part focuses on Venezuela’s future, addressing social resilience, national reconciliation, the country’s reconstruction, and the author’s concluding reflections on the challenges and questions facing Venezuelan society.