Eroding Trust and Bonuses Challenge Venezuela's Socialist Party

Challenges Facing Venezuela's Socialist Party

(Reuters) Feb 8 - On the edge of Venezuela’s main oil city Maracaibo, members of a local branch of the ruling socialist party went door-to-door in the weeks after U.S. forces captured President Nicolas Maduro, asking residents if they still supported the party that has run the country for nearly 20 years. The result: about half of members said they no longer did.

Declining Support and Participation

“The response is very bad,” said a person who helped lead the effort. “There is division among us.” 

Impact of Economic Conditions

While Reuters was not able to independently verify the canvassing results, the reported drop in support aligned with information gathered from three other parts of the country. 

Government Response and Future Outlook

The news agency spoke to 13 party members or local leaders across four states who reported fractures in the United Socialist Party (PSUV) following the U.S. attack. All of them expressed a deep sense of uncertainty and many voiced worries about their economic future. 

The government’s patronage system, which bought a form of party loyalty through financial benefits and food parcels, also appears to be under pressure, with five of the sources saying some contributions had stopped since Maduro’s capture. 

Six of the people described distrust among party loyalists and spreading suspicion of interim President Delcy Rodriguez. Eight said they had seen a drop in participation and support at their local party branch, with two of them estimating a 70% fall in attendance at events like marches and local assembly meetings.

The people Reuters spoke to all requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, with several saying local leaders were encouraging the party faithful to snitch on any members losing faith in the cause, a common tactic for weeding out popular dissent in Venezuela. Reuters has withheld the names of the people it interviewed to protect their safety.

There are no recent public numbers on party membership and while Reuters talked to people observing falling participation in four geographically dispersed states, the news agency could not determine what the situation was across all 24 states in the country. Most foreign media do not have permanent staff in the country and Venezuelans are generally reluctant to speak freely with reporters because of potential reprisals.    

Neither the Venezuelan government nor PSUV responded to Reuters requests for comment on the eroding support for the party and the fraying of its patronage system. 

Calls for national unity in the face of threats to Venezuela have been a constant in Rodriguez’s speeches and public appearances since Maduro's removal, and she has also cheered the resilience of the country's people and pledged economic development for all.

Despite decrying Maduro’s detention as a kidnapping, Rodriguez appears to be complying with U.S. demands to open the country to American oil companies and has also met with the director of the Central Intelligence Agency to discuss cooperation against drug trafficking.

Fraying party support at the grassroots level would be a problem for Rodriguez. Reuters has previously reported how she is already battling to shore up her rule by putting allies in positions of power to shield herself from the potential threat posed by Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello, who also heads the PSUV and has close connections to the security services and colectivos -  the hardline motorcycle-riding enforcement arm of the party. 

Reuters was unable to reach Cabello directly for comment. All media requests to government officials in Venezuela are handled centrally by the Communications Ministry, which did not respond to questions for this story.

Publicly, Cabello has stressed unity. On Jan. 12, he used his weekly press conference as party leader to emphasize Rodriguez has "all the support of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela.”

Neither U.S. President Donald Trump nor Rodriguez has seriously addressed the question of elections since Maduro’s ouster, but the anecdotal dwindling of local support appears to point to an uncomfortable truth for the PSUV: Maduro’s exit has done little to improve popularity, according to the party members Reuters interviewed.

A local party leader in the northern state of Aragua said the party had no way to grow or win elections, “even if we had Che Guevara or Gandhi as a candidate."

“You have a situation where the apparatus of repression is fragmenting and on top of that the remaining grassroots base is demobilizing. That’s a huge challenge for governability,” said Ricardo Rios, head of Caracas-based analysis and consultancy firm Poder & Estrategia.

Still, local support for the party may revive. Venezuela has already received $500 million from crude sales and any significant economic improvement could help boost funding of the party and get membership perks, which have historically helped buttress support, flowing again.

In response to Reuters questions about the problems facing the Socialist Party, a senior White House official said: “The country is stable, illegal migration has stopped, drug flows have halted, and the new oil deal will generate economic prosperity for both the Venezuelan and American people."

MEANS OF CONTROL

All of Venezuela's top officials are long-time members of the PSUV. The party was created in 2007 by merging the disparate political and social forces that swept socialist President Hugo Chavez to power in 1999. That movement also came to bear his name - ‘Chavismo.’ 

By 2009, as Chavez poured oil money into social projects, the party claimed over 7 million members. Though founded with the promise of designing policy from the bottom-up, the party increasingly became a way to flex presidential power and crush popular dissent, especially after Chavez died and Maduro took over in 2013. The party’s lawmakers have a super majority in the national assembly - which is headed by Rodriguez's brother Jorge - and control all but one of the country's 24 governorships.

The reasons given for falling local support varied. Some said people were wary of being associated with the party if the opposition were to win power, fearing some form of retribution. Others said uncertainty was causing infighting in the party. Nearly all spoke of disillusionment and questioned the loyalty of the new leadership to the Chavista cause. 

Adding to people’s hardship are problems with the delivery of party handouts, both food and financial, that have hit local branches, five sources said. They said members in three states - Zulia, Aragua and Falcon – were deserting the party because the government had stopped making bonus payments and distributing welfare.  Reuters was not able to independently verify the information it gathered about stalling handouts.

Government payments, which through various different benefits can for some add up to over $100 a month, are a vital income for millions in Venezuela, where the monthly minimum wage is less than $1 and poverty is rampant. Inflation is also estimated by analysts to have topped 400% in 2025. 

The complexity of Venezuela's welfare system, with an array of benefits delivered at different times to different people, meant Reuters was unable to get a complete picture of the status of all payments and food parcels, with some of those interviewed saying certain bonuses were still arriving while others were not.

One source in Zulia state said that in their district 600 people had not received their “family bonus”, a direct welfare payment of up to $65 given to help with living costs. Three sources also reported that food parcels, known as CLAP, have not been delivered, with some adding that problems with these deliveries predate the capture of Maduro but have continued since. 

In the municipality of Mara, in the northwest border with Colombia, one party member said there were old-school Socialist Party members still committed to the cause and “clapping like seals” but that even they are “turning because they haven't been paid their bonuses."

About 70% of local party members and public employees in Mara ignored calls to participate in two recent pro-Maduro marches, the person said, leading bosses to threaten people with firings. Reuters could not establish the size of the marches or if there were any firings as a result. 

Four of the people Reuters spoke to reported that even the motorbike-riding ‘colectivos’ were attending fewer events and have not been mobilized to push people into public support of the government. Their members have been responsible for killing opposition figures and anti-government protesters, according to reports, which Reuters has not independently confirmed, from organizations like Human Rights Watch.

The person in Mara said many colectivo members are now working as motorbike taxi drivers, failing to show up to marches despite threats from local authorities to revoke their mototaxi work permits, the person said. "They hide, they fake an illness and a few have gone to Colombia." 

(Editing by Stephen Eisenhammer and Claudia Parsons)