Venezuela’s Socialists Announce ‘Free and Fair’ 2024 Presidential Election, Guaidó to Run

CARACAS, Venezuela – Socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro announced on Saturday that he would preside over “free and fair” elections in 2024.

“In 2024 the presidential elections will come, the people will vote, they will elect and, on January 10, 2025, the president-elect will be sworn in and will continue the course of our country, in peace, in democracy, with the protagonism of the people,” Maduro said on Saturday during an interview given to the online left-wing Argentine show Radio La Pizarra (“Chalkboard Radio”) and retransmitted by Venezuelan state-owned media.

Maduro was interviewed by Alfredo Serrano Mancilla, the Spanish adviser to the Venezuelan socialist regime that oversaw the socialism-induced collapse of the South American nation’s economy.

Maduro’s promise of “free and fair” presidential elections in 2024 comes days after his socialist regime insisted that it would not sign any agreement with the Venezuelan “opposition” regarding “free and fair” elections until the United States, the European Union, and other countries first rescind all sanctions imposed on the Venezuelan socialist regime and its officials — a demand branded as “sanctions-free fair elections.”

Venezuelan “opposition” parties have already expressed their intent to participate in the “free and fair” 2024 presidential election, aiming to hold a primary later in 2023 to elect a candidate that would go against Maduro next year.

The Justice First party announced in March that Henrique Capriles Radonski — who lost against Chávez in 2012 and Maduro in 2023 — will be its candidate for the primaries despite Capriles having an active 15-year ban imposed on him by the socialist regime in 2017 that prevents him from running or holding any public office.

The Popular Will party (a member of the Socialist International), of which former interim President Juan Guaidó was a member, also announced in March that Guaidó is going to be its candidate for the upcoming primaries.

Polls conducted in February show that former conservative lawmaker María Corina Machado and comedian Benjamín Rausseo are the two most favored hypothetical candidates to rival Maduro in a “free and fair” 2024 election.

Nicolás Maduro’s last legal term as president ended in 2019. Maduro organized an election in May 2018 widely considered a sham, featuring record-low turnout, only candidates approved by Maduro, and many accusations of voter intimidation and fraud. Maduro “won” that election and has illegitimately occupied the presidential palace since the end of his term in January 2019.

The sham election, which gave Maduro a second six-year term (2019-2024), was not recognized by much of the free world. The Venezuelan National Assembly, at the time not controlled by Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), used its constitutional power to declare the sham election a “rupture in the democratic order,” which grants the lawmaking body the power to choose an interim president. The National Assembly designated Juan Guaidó for the position.

Guaidó’s interim government was dissolved by the opposition-led National Assembly in December after having failed to exert any kind of power in Venezuela or oust Maduro in its near four-year lifespan.

When asked if he was concerned the international community would once again not recognize the legitimacy of the 2024 presidential election, Maduro asserted that he did not care.

“The expectation we have is the same as always: We don’t care what [United States] imperialism thinks, nor what the oligarchies think about the political, social, institutional, cultural and economic life of Venezuela,” Maduro said. “We don’t care whether they say anything or not, whether they recognize or don’t recognize.” 

Maduro also referred to Guaidó’s interim presidency – supported by the United States, the European Union, Canada, the United Kingdom, and a group of 50 other countries – as a “failed exercise.”

“There’s the defeated, failed, unsuccessful exercise of this Guaidó. We never cared if they said: ‘No, the president of Venezuela is Guaidó.’ He was not president for an hour, not a second,” Maduro expressed.

The upcoming 2024 presidential election will be the latest in a series of “free and fair” elections executed by the Venezuelan socialist regime, which currently controls all five branches of the Venezuelan government, the nation’s military and armed forces, and an overwhelming majority of the country’s regional governments.

Nicolás Maduro, who prior to becoming Venezuela’s president had occupied a handful of high-ranking positions in the Venezuelan government, was more commonly known as Hugo Chávez’s foreign affairs minister between 2006 and 2013. Maduro was also appointed vice president of Venezuela by Chávez in October 2012, days after the 2012 presidential election.

During Chávez’s last public address on December 8, 2012, the socialist dictator — who had been receiving treatment for an undisclosed type of cancer — implored his adherents to vote for Maduro should something happen to him shortly before he traveled to Havana to receive further treatment.

Maduro automatically became Venezuela’s interim president following Hugo Chávez’s death on March 5, 2013. As per the Venezuelan constitution, immediate emergency presidential elections were held in April 2013, in which Maduro narrowly defeated Capriles by a 1.49-percent margin.

The controversial results sparked a brief period of intense protests in Venezuela that ultimately flickered away as Capriles did not further challenge the electoral results, giving Maduro breathing room to continue implementing Hugo Chávez’s socialist “Fatherland Plan” over the next few years.

In the decade spanning Maduro’s ascent to power, the socialist regime organized ten other “free and fair” elections – making a total of 27 elections since the socialist party came to power in 1999. The results of all the elections were favorable to the PSUV save for the 2007 constitutional referendum and the 2015 legislative election. Nevertheless, the socialist regime found ways to ignore and nullify its two electoral defeats.

In 2007, Chávez proposed a series of reforms to the Venezuelan constitution to implement socialism at a constitutional level. The reform failed to pass after 50.7 percent of the electorate voted no against 49.29 percent that voted in favor — which prompted an angered Chávez to tell his opponents to enjoy their “shitty victory” on live television.

The rejection of the socialist reforms to the constitution did not stop Chávez (and then Maduro) from continuing to implement socialism in Venezuela through decrees and laws, thus invalidating the results of the election.

In 2015, as socialist policies forced the country into economic collapse, the opposition obtained a crucial victory in parliamentary elections, obtaining two thirds of the seats in the National Assembly — a crucial number that would have allowed the opposition to counter the Maduro regime at a legislative level.

The Maduro regime swiftly reacted by having the outgoing National Assembly renew the country’s Supreme Court Justice terms and stack all seats with pro-regime figures days before the end of the their terms. The Justices proceeded to annul the electoral results in Amazonas state, claiming alleged fraud accusations that were never resolved, thus suspending the swearing in of the state’s three elected opposition lawmakers as a means to deprive the opposition from having the important two-third majority.

The National Assembly nonetheless chose to swear in the three lawmakers in January 2016, ignoring the court’s order, which prompted the Supreme Court to declare the National Assembly in contempt, rendering all of their actions null and void.

Maduro then finished neutralizing the opposition-led parliament by installing a “Constituent Assembly” in 2017 to replace the opposition-led National Assembly with one that was tasked with rewriting the constitution, which it never ended up doing.

Ultimately, the National Assembly was replaced in a sham legislative election in 2020, with the participation of the “opposition” parties, where the United Socialist Party of Venezuela obtained 253 of the 277 seats.