Fired for not voting, Venezuelan speaks out

State workers were threatened with job loss, end to benefits.

CARACAS, VENEZUELA — Javier Hernandez knew he was going to be fired.

Everyone who worked with him in a state-run cement factory was told to vote last month in an election to choose delegates for a new constitutional assembly granting nearly unlimited powers to Venezuela’s ruling socialist party. With the opposition boycotting the vote, virtually all the candidates were government supporters. A vote was tantamount to a show of support for President Nicolas Maduro and his allies.

Resentful of what he saw as a rigged process, Hernandez flouted his supervisors’ order and didn’t vote. Last Wednesday, he was taken outside the building and informed that he was fired.

Now he has become a rare public voice speaking out against a phenomenon that government critics say was widespread in last month’s vote — Venezuelans were threatened with loss of their public benefits or state jobs if they didn’t participate.

“It was not a surprising measure, because we had been warned,” Hernandez said. “The people who did not go to vote were explicitly threatened . ... If we didn’t go to vote on 30th of July, we would be fired.”

Hernandez had worked as a production manager in the factory for five years. Thanks to inflation, his monthly salary had declined so much in value that it was worth only about $25 on the widely used black market exchange rate.

experts say turnout was less than half of that and there was widespread coercion and fraud. The government is Venezuela’s largest employer, with nearly 3 million people working in a public post.

It’s not the first time Maduro or his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, used state jobs and benefits to pressure Venezuelans to support them. Chavez famously retaliated against a group of Venezuelans who signed a 2003 petition asking for his removal. Those who signed it were barred from public employment and often cut off from social benefits.

Maduro has similarly retaliated against state business managers who signed a similar petition last year.

Hernandez says such tactics reached a peak with last month’s constitutional assembly vote.

“President Maduro and the government focused on public employees . ... They said they would make sure that all public employees would vote. For us it was like an alarm bell — it meant we didn’t have an option,” he said.

WIL RIERA / ASSOCIATED PRESS Javier Hernandez, a former employee of a state-run cement factory, seen with his wife, teacher Denitza Colmenarez, at home in Guatire, Venezuela, was fired from his managerial job July 30.