I come for a civil discussion. Sorry, my question is a bit complicated.

Note: I am not asking people to argue whether Maduro is a dictator or not. You are free to do so and I will engage, but that’s not my main question.

What I’m asking is, how come most people, especially uninformed people or those who know very little about Venezuela, call Maduro a dictator? Even well-meaning critics of the abduction?

I’m not looking for “well they’re uninformed” answer. I am, sincerely curious how such an opinion is so, widespread?

I would expect uninformed people to take a simplistic, reductive approach of “well there were elections so I guess he can’t be a dictator”. That is assuming they speak on the matter at all.

A simplistic, surface level investigation reveals: there were elections. They were internationally monitored. Highly automated voting system. Etc. It would also reveal they’re challenged by international community, but I imagined most people would be skeptical of that.

I am not denying the presence of arguments against the validity of the elections, but none those arguments are the result of surface level investigation.

What are your thoughts?

  • Sidyctism II.English
    4·
    6 days ago

    Not an expert either, just the first numbers i found: the us polls had a 2-5% lead for clinton. And they were (basically) correct. Clinton won the popular vote by a 2% margin. Thats on the lower end of the estimate, but i dont see a reason to assume some (widespread) fraud from this.

    From this guardian article, it seems in venezuela, the numbers were wildly different

    About four hours after voting ended, the government-controlled national electoral council declared victory for Maduro, eventually saying that the strongman leader had won nearly 52% of the vote to González’s 43%.

    But thousands of opposition volunteers had managed to collect about 80% of the voting tallies from polling stations, which showed a clear victory for González, with 67% over Maduro’s 30%. Two different independent analyses, from the AP and the Washington Post, reached similar conclusions.

    Note that they arent speaking of polls, but the actual voting tallies of the election. If these are indeed the real tallies, there couldnt be such a wide margin of difference