Webinar: Defending Venezuela Against US-Led Coup Attempt

Where: Online, via Zoom. Register at https://bit.ly/VzlaElections3

When: Sunday, August 25, 2024

Time: 11 am Winnipeg Time

The presidential election in Venezuela, held on July 28, concluded with the re-election of President Nicolás Maduro for the next presidential term (2025-2031), who won with about 51.9% of the votes according to the second bulletin of the National Electoral Council (CNE). Although he received a little over 7% more votes than his nearest rival, Edmundo González Urrutia of the far-right coalition Unitary Platform, the ultra-right opposition has refused to recognise the results, claiming that President Maduro and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) carried out an electoral fraud.

Just after the initial declaration of the results in the early morning hours of July 29 and the far-right’s non-recognition of the same, violent protests erupted in several parts of Venezuela, causing widespread material and human losses, including loss of lives, reminiscent of the guarimbas of 2014 and 2017 and the violence accompanying the Guaidó coup attempt in 2019. In parallel, the data transmission system of the CNE suffered an unprecedented cyberattack that delayed the transmission of results. Taking advantage of this situation, far-right politician María Corina Machado published falsified voting minutes as “evidence” of electoral fraud and launched a media campaign presenting González Urrutia as the “winner” of the July 28 election. This has been repeated and inflated by mainstream media outlets across the world as well as on social media. As expected, the United States declared González as the “president” of Venezuela, and some of its vassals in Latin America and Europe have followed suit.

Was there really an electoral fraud in Venezuela? Is there a possibility of executing such a fraud and stealing an election in Venezuela? There were more than 900 international electoral observers and 1,300 foreign journalists present in the country who witnessed the electoral process. What do they have to say about the election and the fraud claims? To hear directly from some such observers and journalists, International Manifesto Group and Orinoco Tribune are jointly organising a webinar on August 25, 2024, where we will be joined by a number of experts who were present in Venezuela during the electoral process.

Speakers:

Diego Sequera is a journalist, writer, translator, editor, and political analyst based in Caracas, Venezuela. He is a founding member of Misión Verdad, where he writes about geopolitics, global conflict, and Latin American and Venezuelan history and politics.

Francisco Domínguez is a specialist on Latin America’s contemporary political economy, about which he has published extensively. A former refugee from Chile’s Pinochet, he is also National Secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign in the UK. He is also involved in solidarity activities with Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico. He makes regular contributions to various alternative media. He is co-author of Right-Wing Politics in the New Latin America and author of the pamphlet Maduro: A decade continuing Chavez’s socialist anti-imperialist struggle.

Arnold August, M.A. in Political Science from McGill University, where he also completed two years of Ph.D. studies in the same field, is a Montreal-based author and journalist specializing in geopolitics and international relations, Global South, multipolarity, Latin America, ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for Our America), Venezuela, and Cuba. He also focuses on Palestine, indigenous peoples, China, BRICS, and Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). He has visited Venezuela five times including for the July 28, 2024 presidential elections as an international observer, and written over 40 articles on Venezuela, many of them also published in Spanish and French. Of his 2013 book (published in English and Spanish) on comparative political systems, the section on Venezuela is still very valid. His website: www.arnoldaugust.com

Ivan Pankratz is a Venezuela solidarity activist based in Winnipeg, Canada. In 2007 he went to west Africa where he led workshops for local teachers. He is a math and physical education teacher.

Linda Christian works with the International Manifesto Group as an administrator. She completed a PhD in history specializing in the history of the French Revolution during the Terror and Thermidorian periods. She was an international observer for the July 28 presidential elections in Venezuela.

Alison Bodine is a social justice and antiwar organizer and author based in Vancouver, Canada. She is on the editorial board of the Fire This Time newspaper and coordinator of the Fire This Time Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, as well as a founding member of the Venezuela Solidarity Network. She is author of the book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Venezuela (Battle of Ideas Press). She regularly publishes articles on climate justice, migrant and refugee issues, and Venezuela. Her articles have been published by Fire This Time, Venezuelanalysis, Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA), Common Dreams, Monthly Review, and Counter Punch. She has travelled as a speaker and participant to international antiwar and anti-imperialist events in Cuba, Venezuela, Ireland, England, and the US. She has been an international elections observer in Venezuela on three occasions, including the 2024 presidential elections.

Dimitri Lascaris is a lawyer, journalist and activist. After graduating from the University of Toronto Faculty of Law in 1991, Dimitri began his legal career at the Wall Street law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell, first working from the firm’s New York offices and then joining the firm’s offices in Paris, France. In 2012, Dimitri was selected by Canadian Lawyer Magazine as one of the 25 most influential lawyers in Canada. In 2013, he was named by Canadian Business Magazine as one of the 50 most influential persons in Canadian business. Canadian Business Magazine described Dimitri as the “fiercest legal advocate for shareholder rights.” In 2023, Dimitri was nominated as one of Canadian Lawyer’s 25 most influential lawyers in Canada.

Jesús Rodríguez-Espinoza (moderator) is an expert in international relations, Venezuelan politics, and media and communication. He served for several years as Consul General of Venezuela in Chicago (United States). Before that, he was part of the foundational editorial team of the Venezuelan online media Aporrea. He is the founder and editor of the Venezuelan anti-imperialist news outlet Orinoco Tribune.