2025: The Pro-Government Coalition Won Elections for 23 of 24 Regional Governors

The National Electoral Council (CNE) scheduled the 24 gubernatorial elections for May 25, 2025.

One opposition leader, Maria Machado, called for abstention and urged voters to boycott the gubernatorial elections. Machado did not accept the results of the 2024 election of Nicolas Maduro as President accusing the CNE of massive fraud and claiming that Edmundo Gonzalez had actually won the Presidential election. Machado maintained that voting would mean surrendering the fraud claims and would serve to “legitimize” Maduro and the CNE.[1]

Other opposition leaders complained that Machado had not consulted with them before calling for a voter boycott.[2] In April, several prominent self-described opposition “moderates” announced a new political platform DECIDE to encourage voter turnout. The Decide platform was led by former Presidential candidates Henrique Capriles and Henri Falcon and Jesus “Chuo” Torrealba, former National leader of the Democratic Unity Coalition (MUD). They urged voting to demonstrate to the government that people wanted them out and to lay the groundwork for future democratic action.[1] They argued that abstaining would effectively hand over all regional executive powers to the government.[2]

Two of the three opposition parties that supported Gonzalez in the 2024 election rejected boycotting. Four opposition governors who won their seats in the 2021-2022 elections ran for re-election. Juan Requesens who was a leader of anti-Maduro protests in 2014 and spent two-years in prison registered to run for governor of Miranda. [1] Former Presidential candidate Manuel Rosales registered to run for Governor of Zulia. Machado called those participating in the election “traitors” and “scorpions.” The Primero Justicia party supported the boycott and expelled Capriles and Requesens. The opposition candidates were not unified and ran individually without their parties’ support.

The pro-government coalition ran a unified slate of 24 gubernatorial candidates. The pro-government coalition won all but one of the 24 governorships taking 3 of the 4 states previously held by the opposition. Voter turnout was 42.66%. The only opposition candidate re-elected as governor was Alberto Galindez in Cojedos state.

Machado succeeded in creating uncertainty and electoral distrust among anti-government voters.[3] The pro-government candidates won because many anti-government voters simply did not go to vote.[4]



1.     New York Times, In the Shadow of a Tainted Election, Maduro Asks Venezuelans to Vote Again, May 25, 2025

2.     NPR, Why Venezuela’s opposition has urged voters to boycott upcoming regional elections, May 16, 2025

3.     Orinoco Tribune, The High Stakes of Venezuela’s May 25 Regional Elections, May 16, 2025

4.     Orinoco Tribune, The Losers of the May 25 Elections in Venezuela ,June 6, 2025

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  2020:U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Show that Venezuela is not a Major Source of Illegal Drugs On March 11, 2020, the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) released a Research Report authored by Geoff Ramsey and David Smilde: Beyond the Narcostate Narrative: What U.S. Drug Monitoring Data Says About Venezuela. [1] The Report concluded that: ·         “Venezuela is not a primary transit country for U.S. bound cocaine. About 90% of all    U.S.-bound cocaine is trafficked through Western Caribbean and Eastern Pacific routes, not through Venezuela’s Eastern Caribbean seas.” The Research Report relied on data from the U.S. Interagency Consolidated Counterdrug Database (CCDB), a multi-source collection of global illegal drug trafficking events that is gathered from intelligence data such as detection and surveillance as well as interdiction and law enforcement data. The authors noted that:” According to the Department of Defense ‘The ...
Read more

The Venezuela Reader - A Blog Focused on Recent History and Venezuela-U.S. Relations

Image
  The Venezuela Reader- A Blog Focused on Recent History and Venezuela-U.S. Relations My name is Leonard G.- I am The Venezuela Reader. I am a retired agricultural policy analyst living in the Washington, DC area. After retirement and when Covid closed off many activities, I began reading about US foreign policy. I was particularly intrigued by Venezuela. So, I began reading about Venezuela five years ago and haven’t stopped. Faced with mountains of paper, I took it on myself to summarize events in Venezuela’s history and in its relations with the US. I challenged myself to write one-page summaries which are factually accurate and documented with outside sources -newspaper articles, academic articles, government reports. I have already drafted over 200 one-page summaries covering events and milestones including elections, riots, court rulings, US sanctions, oil policies, social policies, food and agriculture, racism, drug trafficking, important reports, and biographies. I am...
Read more
Image
  2025:Former United Nations Drug Official Calls Venezuelan Narco-State Narrative a Great Hoax   Pino Arlacchii was the Executive Director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) from 1997 to 2002. He recently wrote an article about the U.S. declaration that Venezuela is a “narco-state.” [1] His article was translated into English and released by Venezuelanalysis. [2] Here are excerpts from his article:[2]   Pino Arlacchi : The Great Hoax Against Venezuela: Oil Geopolitics Disguised as “War on Drugs” ·        “During my time as head of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), I frequently travelled to Colombia, Bolivia, Peru and Brazil, but never to Venezuela. There was simply no need. ·        “The Venezuelan government’s collaboration in the fight against drug trafficking was among the best in South America, rivalled only by Cuba’s impeccable record. This makes Trump’s nar...
Read more