Socialism and Freedom Party
Pictures: José Carlos Gómez, 2013
Against a backdrop of evident apathy and widespread disinterest among the majority of the Venezuelan people, elections for mayors and municipal council members were held in the country on Sunday, July 27.
In these elections, the ruling party (PSUV) went from holding 212 mayors to 285. The capitalist opposition sector that participated in the process went from 123 mayors in the 2021 elections to only 50, meaning it lost 73 municipalities.
For its part, the Chavista government won all state capitals, except for the city of San Carlos, capital of Cojedes. A noteworthy fact is that the government retained the city of Maracaibo, the country’s second largest city. Previously, in the regional elections in May, it took the state of Zulia from Manuel Rosales.
Just as we had characterized it in our statement prior to the elections, this was a new electoral farce in which the real winner was abstention. The government, through the National Electoral Council, says abstention was 56%, but the images and photos that circulated on social media, and what we were able to verify in the different regions, is that abstention was higher than in the May elections. We can confidently say that it was actually between 85% and 90%. If the government says it was 56%, which is already quite high, one can only imagine how high it actually was.
In the days leading up to the election, the lack of interest was palpable. In fact, many people were’nt even aware that elections were being held on Sunday, July 27. What is clear from this new electoral farce is the widespread discontent with Maduro’s government. The lack of interest and apathy, reflected in the abstention rate, are an expression of the overwhelming and widespread rejection of the government.
The Venezuelan people have no confidence in the CNE, a government-controlled body that last year carried out a scandalous fraud in the July 28 presidential elections, sparking a popular uprising in the country’s main cities, resulting in 25 people killed, 100 wounded, and more than 2,000 detained. The popular struggle against last year’s fraud was left to wither away by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, who refused to call for mobilizations.
After a monumental fraud, working people no longer have any expectation of achieving the changes they aspire to through elections. The elections on July 27 were the product of an agreement between the government and the bosses’ sectors that endorsed the electoral farce by taking part, with the aim of getting a share of the mayoralties, knowing that there would be a high abstention rate.
Meanwhile, the opposition sector that abstained, led by María Corina, is the same one that, before last year’s presidential elections, called for the suspension of the struggles of workers and popular sectors, calling on people to wait for a hypothetical Edmundo González victory.
According to the official results, the government is gradually advancing toward greater control of the various institutions of the political regime. It has now taken control of 73 municipalities that were previously in the hands of opposition sectors. And it took the municipality of Maracaibo away from Manuel Rosales. Basically removing him from the political game, privileging relations with Henrique Capriles and the sector he leads in Primero Justicia, as well as with Fuerza Vecinal, which is in fact an opportunistic franchise of the ruling party.
As we said in our statement prior to the elections: “Our central task today is to strengthen the struggle for wages and pensions to cover the cost of the basic basket of goods, for the freedom of all political prisoners and the defense of democratic liberties, as well as to promote the struggle to impose an emergency Workers’ and People’s Plan that responds to all the ills afflicting the working people.”
We must advance in the patient organization of the popular sectors and workers. We insist that it will only be through mobilization and struggle that we will be able to defeat the government’s austerity measures, which it is implementing in agreement with the business sector, and restore democratic freedoms and the rights of working people, and create the conditions for achieving a government of workers on the road to authentic socialism.
August 2, 2025
Venezuelan Voices 