Fidel Castro called on the late President Hugo Chávez to stop holding elections, according to a recording of a telephone conversation between a pro-government TV host and a senior Cuban intelligence officer. The TV anchorman agrees with the former Cuban dictator that elections “can bring our revolution down,” according to the tape released by Venezuela’s opposition, which also reveals infighting and corruption within the ruling elite.

During the conversation between Mario Silva (right) , a hardcore government supporter and TV anchorman, and Aramis Palacios, a lieutenant colonel with Cuba’s G2 intelligence agency, El Universal reports:

Silva said: “Speaking of devaluation, the problem is the flight of capital in some enterprises owned by (Congress Speaker) Diosdado Cabello.” The Congress Speaker might “corrupt, together with the ’85 generation” the army.” He added that inside the Venezuelan army “middle-level cadres hate, despise Diosdado’s attitude;” therefore, “not everything is lost.”

Silva commented that President Nicolás Maduro and his partner Cilia Flores skipped a meeting with Defense Minister Diego Molero, who seemingly tried to talk about a “serious internal situation” inside the army caused by rumors going around. Furthermore, he said that the practice of “1 per 10″ ahead of the presidential election of April 14 “did not work.”

“Jorge Rodríguez (the leader of President Nicolás Maduro’s campaign team and Caracas mayor) called to caution me against what I could say, because they could kick the campaign down in a couple of days,” he added.

Silva said that once Fidel Castro lamented that late President Hugo Chávez did not finish elections off. “We put ourselves the Sword of Damocles when saying that the CNE (National Electoral Council) is impregnable. How could I say then that it was hacked?”

“Because people make mistakes and I fully agree with it. Elections here as they stand right now, they can blow us and can bring our revolution down.”

Opposition lawmakers didn’t say where they obtained the recording, The Wall Street Journal’s Ezequiel Minaya reports:

In the alleged conversation, a male voice identified by the opposition as Mr. Silva portrays a sense of crisis in the government of President Nicolás Maduro, who succeeded the late Hugo Chávez. Mr Maduro narrowly won April elections against the opposition and is struggling to cope with growing economic problems, including shortages and inflation.

“This is going to fuel the tension and uncertainty in the country,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think-tank in Washington, D.C.

The exposé came as the regime signaled its intent to crack down on its critics.

“We have identified and have the id numbers of the 900,000 people who did not vote for me,” Maduro reportedly warned.

He recording confirms long-suspected tensions within the regime, notably between Maduro and the armed forces.

“Although Chávez used the armed forces to consolidate his power, according to Silva, the army is now divided, with some factions in favor of staging a coup,” Elias Groll writes for Foreign Policy:

 According to Silva, Maduro has managed to alienate Diego Molero, the country’s defense minister, whom Silva describes as an “operator” and a “commando.” The strained relationship resulted in rumors circulating in Caracas that Molero was about to launch a coup attempt, leading Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, to dispatch Silva via intermediaries to find out if the rumors were true. They were not.

Despite the explosive nature of the conversation between Silva and Palacios — never mind the crazy fact that he is having in-depth conversations with Cuban intelligence agents in the first place — it is far from clear what repercussions this recording will have on the ground in Venezuela.

Writing at Caracas Chronicles, Juan Nagel says the recording may strip some of the revolutionary veneer off Maduro:

The important thing to keep in mind is that we are not the target audience for this recording. Yes, we all knew that Cabello was a crook, Maduro a nincompoop, Silva a Marxist Cuban mole, Rangel an evil power broker, and Flores a scheming Lady Macbeth. But the important thing is that rank-and-file chavistas … didn’t. Up until now, they have been immune from these facts because of the messenger.

Maduro’s foreign minister, Elias Jaua, announced last weekend that the regime wants to repair diplomatic relations with the United States. But there are at least three good reasons why Washington shouldn’t do so, writes analyst David Cohen:

First, Venezuela last month incarcerated an American filmmaker, Timothy Hallet Tracy, on fabricated charges of stoking the violence which accompanied opposition accusations of fraud against Maduro, following his election victory by a margin of less than two points. Tracy’s arrest was personally ordered by Maduro, who insists that he is a spy, while the State Department maintains that he is a private citizen….

Reason number two: sending an ambassador to Caracas would amount to a complete reversal of the American decision not to recognize the results of the April 14 election. ….Additionally, a climbdown by the U.S. would silence the only significant objection to the election process voiced within the international community. Most of Latin America has already acquiesced to Maduro’s triumph, including countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile, for whom military rule of the sort that now prevails in Venezuela–Maduro uses the sinister term “political-military command”–is a recent memory. There is nothing to be gained from the U.S. joining in with this chorus of hypocrisy.

Finally: given the degree of control the Cuban regime exercises over Maduro, one might reasonably wonder whether diplomatic relations are really being restored with Havana, and not Caracas. Venezuelans have spent much of today glued to their TV screens after the opposition released an audio recording of a conversation between Mario Silva, a prominent television anchor and incorrigible chavista, and Aramis Palacios, a senior official of the G2, Cuba’s secret police. As far as the opposition is concerned, the exchange between the two men amounts to satisfactory confirmation that Cuba is the real power behind Maduro’s throne.

The recording validates earlier revelations by a former confidante of Chavez, Maj. Gen. Antonio Rivero, that more than 200,000 Cubans arrived in Venezuela following Chavez’s assumption of power in 1999, says Cohen.

“Among the projects they launched was the “Strategic Cooperation Team,” which involved a wholesale revision of Venezuela’s military doctrine under the watchful eye of a Cuban commander,” he writes.

“Chavismo pt. II is off to a rocky start,” Jessie Bullock writes for Policymic:

Last week, international media outlets got word of Venezuela’s toilet paper shortage and plan to import 50 million toilet paper rolls before supermarkets were totally wiped clean. This is a major setback for Chávez’s successor, who has carried out Chávez’s tradition of controlling markets and setting rigid price controls.

Scarcity is nothing new to Venezuelans, as residents are accustomed to scarcities of milk, sugar, and chicken. The following video went viral in early 2013, showing Venezuelans fighting at a grocery store’s meat counter over chicken.

Bolivia’s expulsion of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) this month is a troubling development on its own, but when viewed in the context of similar actions by other governments, it raises questions about the future of American foreign assistance in the face of authoritarianism, writes Sarah Trister, Manager of Congressional Affairs for Freedom House.

Bolivian president Evo Morales (right) linked his decision to an offhand comment in which Secretary of State John Kerry referred to Latin America as the United States’ “backyard,” but he also accused USAID of political meddling and “conspiring” against his government. Morales’s discomfort with American assistance dates back many years. In 2009, USAID suspended most democracy programming in Bolivia at his insistence; now the agency’s operations in the country are being shuttered completely.

Many governments are wary of democracy aid because it is designed to foster independent institutions and civil society, rather than buttress entities under the control of incumbent national leaders. But the short-term interests of incumbents should not be confused with the long-term interests of their country, or of the United States. The tremendous value of independent structures becomes especially obvious in times of transition. In the case of Egypt, USAID agreed to grant the Mubarak government control over most democracy assistance in 2009, effectively shutting down many of those efforts. When the regime collapsed in the face of a popular uprising in 2011, the country was left with an array of dysfunctional and discredited institutions, and the United States was left to scramble for friendly partners and a viable path to stability.

Support for civil society, democratic institutions, and human rights should be elevated to a universal, and nonnegotiable, aspect of American foreign policy, and no government should get an exception. In countries that are outright hostile to democratic values, the administration should continue to raise these issues in bilateral meetings and public statements, and assist civil society through creative methods—including offshore and multilateral initiatives, as has been done in cases such as Cuba, Ethiopia, and Egypt in the past.

Congress and the administration should work together to make specific and quantifiable progress on democracy and human rights matters a core condition for U.S. aid to authoritarian governments, as in places like Egypt, Sri Lanka, and Burma. And if the established goals are not met, the United States must follow through on the consequences.

This brief extract is taken from a longer post on the Freedom House blog here. 

During the recent presidential election campaign, Nicolás Maduro, the acting president and the person anointed by Chávez as his heir benefited from a constant presence in the media, writes the Carnegie Endowment’s Moisés Naím (left), while the visibility and messages of opposition candidate Henrique Capriles were severely limited by the government.

One of the most emphatic television messages of support for Mr Maduro was that of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil. After stating that it was wrong to interfere in the internal affairs of another country, Mr Lula da Silva went on to explain why Mr Maduro should be the next president. Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s current leader, immediately recognised Mr Maduro’s victory, despite the fact that both the opposition and several countries demanded a recount, citing evidence of irregularities.

In April, 600,000 people who in last October’s election had voted for Chávez changed their minds and voted against the dead president’s candidate. But not everywhere. In Rio Chiquito, a town in the western state of Yaracuy, Mr Maduro obtained 943 per cent more votes than Chávez did in October.

International pressure has forced the government to accept an audit of the recent vote, writes Naím, a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy. But Tibisay Lucena, head of the National Electoral Council, has been quick to urge Venezuelans “not to hold false expectations, as the audit’s only purpose is to demonstrate that the technology platform works perfectly and the results are a true reflection of the will of the voters”.

This is a brief extract of a longer article originally published in the Financial Times.

With the death of Hugo Chávez, Chávismo has lost its supremacy in Venezuela, writes analyst Raúl Lotitto

It does not matter that so-called Chávistas still control parliament, 17 of 23 provincial governments, and all key state institutions, including the judiciary. Nor does it matter that Chávez’s handpicked successor, Nicolás Maduro, has already assumed the presidency. All of the signs point to the decline of Chávismo and to the end of Venezuela’s role as Latin America’s populist core.

Curiously, many of the young democracies born after the ignominy of the right-wing military regimes of the 1970’s and 1980’s define themselves according to Cuba’s long-lasting communist dictatorship. Tempted by the idea of endless re-election and absolute authority, Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, and Argentina’s Cristina Fernández de Kirchner all indulge and support each other, with the economically and ideologically powerful Venezuela playing an important synthesizing role.

But Venezuela’s election may have changed all that. Given that Maduro cannot retain Chávez’s existing supporters, he is clearly not a candidate for regional leadership. In fact, with Chávismo losing ground, Cuba will struggle to maintain its political influence in Venezuela – and thus the economic sinecures (including heavily subsidized oil) on which it depends.

Read the rest at Project Syndicate.

Raúl Lotitto is a journalist and the founder and director of Producto Editorial Group in Caracas, Venezuela.

Venezuela’s opposition will legally contest last month’s presidential poll results and press the government to hold a new presidential poll, said its leader Henrique Capriles.

“An appeal will be lodged with the Supreme Court of Justice so as to exhaust all the institutions even though we know what the reality is,” he said. “We are going to exhaust all the internal institutions because we have no doubt that this case will end up in the international community.”

The opposition would boycott a partial audit of the election results because the National Electoral Council would not permit an audit of registers containing voters’ signatures and fingerprints.

The electoral council, which is packed with Chavista loyalists, announced last week that it would conduct an audit of 46 percent of the vote not previously assessed.

“We consider this to be a joke,” said Capriles, who contends the election was stolen from him. “If we don’t have access to the registers, we are not going to participate,” he said.

Political analysts and electoral experts, among them Jennifer McCoy of the Carter Center, say the crisis could be defused with an extensive review of the automated voting system to address concerns raised by the opposition, The Washington Post’s Juan Ferero reports:

The opposition thinks there might have been irregularities in as many as 6,000 of the nearly 14,000 voting centers, said Humberto Villalobos, who has worked with a team of opposition technicians to identify irregularities. The opposition also alleges that government supporters used ID cards from dead voters to cast ballots, that some people voted multiple times, that prospective voters were walked through the voting process and instructed to endorse Maduro, and that opposition witnesses were forced out of voting centers.

“The concerns are not about the machines and whether they counted accurately,” said McCoy, who is the Americas director at the center and has observed six elections here. “The questions are much more about who voted. Was there double voting? Was there impersonation of voters? And was there coerced voting?”

Capriles made the announcement to a major opposition rally held on International Workers’ Day.

“Capriles being forced into the streets was indicative of another reality: The opposition has limited options for redress in a country where the ruling United Socialist Party controls the electoral board and the Supreme Court, which Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chávez, packed with loyal supporters,” writes Ferero:

The opposition is also unlikely to get a hearing in the National Assembly, whose president, Diosdado Cabello, a force in the ruling party, has thrown opposition legislators off committees and banned them from speaking for refusing to recognize Maduro as president.

When opposition lawmakers on Tuesday unfurled a banner reading “coup against the parliament,” Maduro’s allies delivered a beating that left several lawmakers bruised and battered, the government’s critics said.

The violence revealed “an escalation of the conflict between political forces” and little possibility of reconciliation in the near future,” said Angel Alvarez, a political science professor at the Central University of Venezuela:

He told The Associated Press that the political uncertainty and tension is likely to hurt Venezuela’s economy, which is struggling with high inflation and frequent shortages linked to the socialist government’s strict foreign exchange restrictions, price controls and nationalization of industries, including many farming and ranching businesses.

It was the third time that opposition parliamentarian, Julio Borges (right), had been assaulted on the floor of the parliament, while his colleague María Corina Machado said her nose was broken.

“The hardest blows have been to the country,” said María Corina Machado. “It is the terrible pain of seeing how they seek to trample on an institution that is indispensable for the working of the democratic system.”

‘Democracy or dictatorship?’

Opposition leaders and some human rights groups, including New York-based Human Rights Watch, say recent government actions against the opposition are raising concerns about whether officials are violating rights and becoming increasingly authoritarian, writes Ferero:

“It’s getting completely out of control, completely out of line,” said JoséMiguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, which has compiled reports on abuses in Venezuela. “Is it a democracy or a dictatorship? I think Venezuela is on the verge of losing any serious claim to being a democracy.”

The authorities have also accused US filmmaker Timothy Tracy of orchestrating a conspiracy to destabilize the regime.

Rights groups and labor unions allied with the opposition say that government ministries are trying to punish workers who voted for Capriles. In a widely circulated video, Housing Minister Ricardo Molina pledges before state employees to personally fire those who are activists in “fascist parties.”

“Let me say with total clarity, I do not care at all about labor rules. In this situation, they don’t matter,” he said, as workers cheered and shouted. “That’s how to govern!”

RTWT

“Bolivian President Evo Morales has said he will expel the US Agency for International Development (USAID)” the BBC reports:

Mr Morales (above right) accused the agency of seeking to “conspire against” the Bolivian people and his government. USAID has been working in Bolivia for almost five decades, and had a budget of $52.1m (£33.4m) for the country in 2010, according to its website.

Bolivia’s indigenous groups and vibrant civil society have grown increasingly frustrated with the government’s authoritarian governance.

Echoing claims made by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify the Kremlin’s expulsion of USAID, Morales accused the agency of using grass-roots organizations to destabilize his government and the country,” The Wall Street Journal reports:

USAID supports programs to stop deforestation through the Initiative for Conservation in the Andean Amazon. Last year, Mr. Morales was forced to cancel a controversial jungle highway project following intense resistance from indigenous groups.

The allegations are “baseless and unfounded”, said a US State Department spokesman.

“This harms the Bolivian people. We think the programs have been positive for the Bolivian people and fully co-ordinated with the Bolivian government and appropriate agencies under their own national development plan,” said Patrick Ventrell.

Addressing a May Day rally in La Paz, the populist president said there was “no lack of US institutions which continue to conspire against our people and especially the national government, which is why we’re going to take the opportunity to announce on this May Day that we’ve decided to expel USAID”.

Morales has accused USAID of “manipulating” and “using” union leaders, claining that its programs have “political rather than social” ends. He has also accused it of “manipulating” and “using” union leaders.

Associated Press reports that: Analyst Kathryn Ledebur of the nonprofit Andean Information Network in Bolivia was not surprised by the expulsion itself but by the fact that Morales took so long to do it after repeated threats, which she believes diminishes its political impact.

“USAID alternative development efforts tied to forced coca eradication provoked his mistrust,” she said of Morales, a longtime coca-growers union leader before his December 2005 election as Bolivia’s first indigenous president.

She said Morales was also upset that USAID money reached lowland regional governments he accused of trying to overthrow him in 2008. Since U.S. assistance has “dwindled to a trickle,” the financial impact will be limited as well, Ledebur said.

Credit: NPR

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro today “put the country’s electricity supplies on an emergency footing after Caracas and outlying areas plunged into darkness amid repeated blackouts,” UPI reports:  Power cuts were a recurring problem for late President Hugo Chavez, who struggled to restore the oil-rich nation’s energy sector back on track after a series of disastrous nationalizations. Critics of Chavez say Venezuela’s infrastructural problems, including power cuts, contributed to the country’s economic downturn. 

Maduro claimed that he personally ordered the arrest of US citizen Tim Tracy (above), a documentary film-maker, says The Associated Press reports:

Tracy’s friends and family told The Associated Press that he had been in Venezuela since last year making a documentary about the confrontation between the opposition and a socialist government that is struggling to maintain its once-high popularity after the death of charismatic President Hugo Chavez.

Interior Minister Miguel Rodriguez Torres claimed that Tracy worked for a U.S. intelligence agency and that he was paying right-wing youths to mount violent protests in the aftermath of the disputed presidential election allegedly won by Maduro.

Tracy sought “to bring the country to civil war… which would immediately provoke the intervention of a foreign power to restore order and reestablish democracy,” Rodriguez said:

Authorities also accused the American of being linked to an organized protest effort here known by the name “Operation Sovereignty,” in which student demonstrators pressed for more information about the health of President Hugo Chavez prior to his death last month. The movement, which has also been vocal in calling for transparent and fair elections, rejected results of the April 14 presidential vote won by Chavez’s handpicked successor Nicolas Maduro.

Tracy, who officials said was born in the midwestern US state of Michigan in 1978, “began to have close relations with these youths from Operation Sovereignty,” Rodriguez said at a press conference.

The arrest is an “unsettling indication that Hugo Chavez’ intolerance of press freedom has survived his death,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the chair of the Freedom of the Press Caucus.

“The charge, reportedly personally approved by President Nicolas Maduro, that Mr. Tracy is ‘creating violence in the cities of this country,’ is ludicrous,” he said.

Schiff called on the Venezuelan authorities to release Tracy, one of his West Hollywood constituents, and allow him to leave without further hindrance.

The arrest appears to suggest that the regime is adopting a harsher approach to dissent at a time when observers believe tolerance would help to address growing political polarization.

“The decision by the government and the electoral commission to reverse course and conduct an audit should be applauded, but a broader effort to respect the rights of the opposition to protest and help build confidence in the audit process would help set a new positive note for Venezuela’s post-Chávez era,” said Christopher Sabatini, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly and senior director of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

“Nicolas Maduro was sworn in as Venezuela’s new president on Friday after a disputed election that has sharply divided the country between those who want to continue the socialist system begun by his charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and those who contend the ruling party won through a fraudulent vote,” The Washington Post’s Juan Forero reports:

The inauguration, which was attended by Latin American leaders but no U.S. diplomat, came a day after the National Electoral Council ruled that an audit of Sunday’s voting could take place. The decision placated opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who said that by reviewing millions of votes “we can show the country the truth.”

“This is a concession to Capriles, but it is also a way of calling his bluff. It is exceedingly unlikely that such an audit will show a different result,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at the University of Georgia.

The council’s president, Tibisay Lucena, told Agence France Presse that the audit was not a recount but would review a sample two-thirds of all ballot boxes not audited on Election Day over the next month.

Both sides stepped back from the brink of a “soft coup”, said Nicmer Evans, a politics professor at Venezuela’s Central University.

Peruvian Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa urged a full recount overseen by international observers to “stop the authoritarian drift that seems to be underway.”

Other reports suggest that the council will audit some 46% of the vote not audited on election night in an unexpected concession welcomed by the opposition.

“We are where we want to be,” said Capriles (left). “I think I will have the universe of voters needed to get where I want to be.”

The compromise may only provide a temporary respite from the past week’s political tensions, observers suggest.

“Barring some unexpected twist we think the immediate crisis should ease, and the immediate risks that the crisis will escalate into outright institutional breakdown are lower,” wrote analyst Ben Ramsey.

Turmoil could resurface, however, as the review won’t be a full recount of votes and has little chance of overturning election results. Mr. Maduro also faces other political challenges, including internal rivalries within his ruling Socialist party.

“Maduro’s government is beginning its tenure in a fragile position, under the shadow of a possible electoral fraud that could comprise his legitimacy to make tough decisions on the increasing economic and social challenges affecting Venezuelans,” Diego Moya-Ocampos, a risk analyst for consultancy IHS Global Insight, told The Wall Street Journal.

Some analysts said the government-controlled recount would almost certainly confirm Maduro’s victory and force the opposition to accept it, Associated Press reports. Others saw the possibility the audit could turn up enough irregularities to throw the election result into question and spawn turmoil.

“It opens a sort of Pandora’s box,” said Edgar Gutierrez, an independent political analyst in Caracas.

Whatever the outcome of the partial recount, some observers believe Maduro’s victory will prove to be pyrrhic.

“The most significant thing to emerge from this is the political victory” for the opposition, said Maria Isabel Puerta, a political science professor at the University of Carabobo. “The opposition’s role is strengthened and Capriles’ leadership is consolidated.” But a Maduro-led regime presents problems for the US.  

“After an ill-advised overture to Hugo Chávez’s government last November, the Obama administration has regained its footingwith a strong, principled stance on Venezuela’s contested election,” analyst José Cárdenas writes for Foreign Policy.

But Washington may be forced to reach an accommodation with Maduro, whose inauguration was attended by Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff and Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (left, with Maduro).

“I think the practical reality is that given the position of other governments it will be very hard for the US not to deal with the Maduro government,” said Michael Shifter of Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think-tank.

Capriles may have relented on his insistence on a full recount because the international community failed to back calls for a transparent audit of the results, observers suggest.

“We may never know how much backroom bargaining produced the electoral commission’s concession, though we can assume it was raised quietly,” writes Christopher Sabatini, the editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly. “But the rush to endorse the election results even before the audit and after the government’s anti-democratic bombast betrays any quiet diplomacy that may have produced the audit.”

The regional grouping of South American governments, Unión de Naciones Suramericanas (UNASUR), was expected to endorse the results, and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza (right) effectively endorsed Maduro’s election.

“As a result, the regional community implicitly endorsed the bullying and vitriolic tactics of this government, which have shut down the rights of citizens to protest and rendered the much-needed recount a mere exercise rather than real test of electoral integrity,” said Sabatini, the senior director of policy at Americas Society/Council of the Americas.

“Moreover, there has been little discussion of any role for credible outside election monitoring organizations to observe the process, a point that is key given the lack of confidence the opposition has in the process and the pattern of political favoritism of the electoral commission,’ he adds.

The disputed election result “demonstrates that, without Chávez at the helm, chavismo, a noxious cocktail of populism, incompetence and repression, is a far less potent force,” says The Economist:

That is the good news. The bad news is that Venezuela’s already polarised society is now split down the middle, and seething. The country could unravel unless Mr Maduro steers a responsible course. It is far from clear that he will.

But the election aftermath does not reflect well on the democratic commitment of regional leaders, writes Sabatini, a former program officer with the National Endowment for Democracy:

Almost twelve years ago, the OAS that Insulza now sits atop signed the Inter-American Democratic Charter. That document promised to protect the checks and balances of representative democracy and minority rights, even against the abuses of elected authorities. At the time, it was hailed as a revolutionary collective commitment to popular sovereignty and political and civil rights and a way of ensuring citizens’ demands would be heard over and protected from the abuses of their governments.

One of the worse outcomes of the positions by UNASUR and Insulza to rush to accept the elections and not insisting on international oversight of the audit is that they have closed down international recourse for approximately half of Venezuela’s citizens who do not support this government. Instead, this 49.1 percent of the voters is expected to simply accept an election produced under an unfair playing field.

The decision by the government and the electoral commission to reverse course and conduct an audit should be applauded, but a broader effort to respect the rights of the opposition to protest and help build confidence in the audit process would help set a new positive note for Venezuela’s post-Chávez era. Unfortunately, few regional governments appear willing to say that publicly.

RTWT

“Venezuela’s opposition leaders feared persecution over post-election protests while the U.S. government backed their calls for a recount and said on Wednesday it was still deciding if it would recognize President-elect Nicolas Maduro,” Reuters reports:

The razor-thin victory by Maduro in Sunday’s presidential vote has been rejected by his rival, Henrique Capriles, who is alleging thousands of irregularities at polling centers and wants a full audit of the ballots.

Capriles says he is sure he won and that his team has evidence of 3,200 irregularities, from voters using fake IDs to intimidation of volunteers at polling centers. Opposition sources say their count showed Capriles had an extra 300,000 to 400,000 votes not shown in the official tally.

The CNE has refused to hold a recount, saying an audit of ballots from 54 percent of the polling centers, in a widely respected electronic voting system, had already been done.

“We are going to have a serious problem of governability from all sides, the economic, the political and the social. If you don’t have a floor to guarantee governability, drafting economic policies becomes that much more complicated,” said Henkel García, a director at local research house Econometrica.

The Obama administration has yet to decide whether to recognize Maduro. Its “procrastination is likely to embolden Venezuela’s opposition,” according to one observer.

“We think there ought to be a recount,” Secretary of State John Kerry told U.S. lawmakers. “Obviously, if there are huge irregularities, we are going to have serious questions about the viability of that government … I’m not sure that’s over yet.”

But the chavista authorities are taking a hardline, reportedly on the counsel of Cuban advisers. Long dependent on Venezuela’s largesse,  Havana stands to lose up to $9bn in annual subsidies should the opposition take office.

“Here we don’t negotiate with the bourgeoisie. Here there is revolution. And if [the opposition] continues with violence, I am ready to radicalize the revolution,” Maduro told a crowd of supporters.

Analysts and opposition activists alike fear that such intemperate rhetoric may signal a harsh crackdown on dissent.

“This backdrop could lead to extended uncertainty, and may lead Maduro to turn more radical in order to project strength and rally his base against a common enemy, Capriles,” said analyst Ben Ramsey, warning that “this could also put any rectification of economic policy on hold, while adding to private-sector uncertainty.”

The Obama administration has questioned the quick certification of the election and supported the call for the recount; so has the government of Spain and OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza,” says The Washington Post, which proposes that the administration “should begin coordinating with Mexico, Chile and other important Latin American democracies to prevent Mr. Maduro from killing his way into power.”

A marginal, contested outcome was one of several problematic scenarios envisaged by analysts, but the result was “a great triumph” for the opposition, said Moises Naim, a former Venezuelan oil minister and a board member of the National Endowment for Democracy.

Should he take power, Maduro will confront a daunting array of problems, from his questionable legitimacy to profound economic dislocation, analysts suggest.

“Until now, the government has been able to divert people’s attention from the economy because of the political issues,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas in Washington, which promotes hemispheric trade. “There was Chávez’s illness, elections, his trip to Cuba, elections again. But we’ve seen the last big event on Sunday—and there’s no more such events that can divert attention away from the collapsing economy.”

Cubazuela under threat

Venezuela’s disputed poll result is bad news for Cuba’s Communist regime, which relied on former leader Hugo Chavez for hard currency and an annual supply of $6bn of subsidized oil. The end of chavista subsidies could trigger “social upheaval” on the island, analysts suggest.

“Cubans can’t be cheering this result. They have to be worried that Maduro proved so politically weak. The opposition has the momentum and will define the agenda,” said Michael Shifter, head of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank.

With Maduro entering office with a much weaker mandate than his colorful predecessor, the Castro-led regime may not enjoy the same economic benefits, potentially threatening the communist island’s lifeline……A clause in Venezuela’s constitution allows for a possible referendum to revoke a president half way through his six-year term, a consideration that will weigh on Maduro’s foreign policy, after his narrow election win.

“The outcome could accelerate Cuba’s reform process,” Shifter told AFP, alluding to the likely need for Maduro to focus his efforts on domestic policy. “The (Cuban) government will be compelled to pursue other economic options.”

Developments in Caracas will compel Cuba to accelerate a reform program designed “to ‘update’ its stalled socialist model,” reports suggest:

To date, measures under Raúl Castro, 81, the president, have bettered everyday life but failed to improve Cuba’s underlying performance, critics say. For the regime, it is a balancing act: change too fast and the regime could unravel; change too slow and the economy will deteriorate and undermine the Castro brothers’ legacy anyway.

Mr Castro, who was quick to congratulate Venezuela’s president-elect on his victory, which should ensure that Cuba has five more years of cheap oil, has three main goals, says Bert Hoffmann, a Cuba expert at the German Institute of Global and Area Studies: “Avoid splits in the elite, and also social unrest; organise a succession; and get gradual economic reforms started to secure the regime’s survival.”

Venezuela supplies Cuba with two thirds of its oil – 100,000 barrels of crude a day – on privileged terms. The arrangement is worth some $9bn, the regime’s major source of funds, exceeding the value of remittances ($2.5 billion), tourism ($2 billion) or exports of nickel, tobacco and drugs (less than $2 billion).

“Cuba can’t hope for anything good from political instability in Venezuela,” according to Cuban academic Arturo Lopez-Levy, from the University of Denver.

“The Cuban government would do well to accelerate its reform process and the opening up of its economic system, to prepare for various scenarios, all of them less favorable than the current situation,” he told AFP.

The regime has enacted a series of relatively anemic economic reforms, allowing Cubans to establish small businesses, buy and sell their homes and permitting farmers to sell up to 50% of their produce directly rather than to the state. But the attempt to mimic China’s model of Market-Leninism is likely to fail, say analysts.

“Nonetheless,” the FT’s Marc Frank suggests, “those changes are only around the edges of what remains a centrally-planned economy that needs to attract foreign investment and grow by more than 5 per cent a year if it is to have any hope of rebuilding crumbling infrastructure and create sufficient jobs to absorb the bulk of Cubans who work for a state that barely pays a living wage.”

Since Castro became president, he adds, economic growth has averaged 2 per cent.

“The reforms are afflicted by inner contradictions in their design: a positive step is taken but then excessive controls and restrictions are introduced, generating disincentives that conspire against their success,” said Carmelo Mesa-Lago, author of Cuba Under Raúl Castro: Assessing the Reforms.

The demise of Chavismo is likely to have significant repercussions for Cuba’s citizens, not least Miguel Diaz-Canel, Castro’s designated successor, said Paul Webster Hare, British ambassador to Cuba from 2001-2004 and a former deputy head of its mission in Caracas.

“Cubans will know now that the Chavista movement depended on Chavez for its leadership and momentum,”

“The Cubans will now conclude that their time for depending on the largesse of Chavismo is limited,” said the ex-diplomat, who teaches international relations at the University of Boston.

“The key lesson may be that for Miguel Diaz-Canel to assume smoothly the mantle of the Castros will be much tougher than they may have supposed,” he said.

Diaz-Canel “may need to start talking more about the material ambitions of Cubans,” and “tell fewer fantasy stories.”