A week ago, the president-candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, reprimanded the Minister of Transportation, Ramón Velásquez, during a rally he offered in El Vigía, Mérida state, within the framework of his electoral campaign. As has happened on other occasions, now that he had to walk through the country, Maduro witnessed the disastrous state of the Mérida-El Vigía highway. “Minister, you answer me for this: you have 20 days to completely repair the road. “I don’t want excuses,” he shouted in front of the official, who nodded and solemnly assumed the assignment, to the applause of those present.
The event was repeated shortly after in the state of Barinas, neighboring Mérida. The turn of the public complaint was for the president of Petróleos de Venezuela, Pedro Tellechea. “Entering here in the city,” said Maduro, “I find a long line of motorized vehicles at a service station because there is no gasoline. This can not be. Minister: you will appear here tomorrow and solve the gasoline problem for me, you will solve it for me.” Applause immediately exploded.
Maduro develops a style very similar to that adopted by Hugo Chávez in his good times, and in the face of the string of adversities that he has to face with an already very irritated population, he offers new promises. That day he stated that very soon he will install the first 50 megawatt solar farm in El Vigía, in a region that has been suffering for years from prolonged daily power outages.
With control of time and the design of the rules, but with a much more apathetic militancy than in the past, the ruling party passionately deploys its arguments and floods television, radio and social networks with advertising spots, with a comprehensive electoral campaign. conceived and a specific message for each of its potential audiences. The above, at a particularly difficult political moment due to the leadership of María Corina Machado, who has delegated her candidacy to Edmundo González Urrutia and appears to be a force that can truly overthrow Chavismo if fully democratic elections are held.
The effort made by Maduro and the revolutionary leadership has made his candidacy grow, whose voting intention, according to opinion polls, has risen from 18 to 25 percent. “Chavismo always emphasizes that Maduro is the guarantee of peace,” says professor and political analyst Luis Peche Arteaga, analyzing the key messages of the PSUV. “That is, either it is them or violence comes: associating the opposition with instability, with coups, with conspiracy. It is telling people: if you want to work in peace, be in peace, if you want to lead a normal life, the opposition cannot win, you have to continue with us.”
In their television content, a special effort is made to encourage people to move forward, based on the timid signs of recovery offered by an economy that was left in ruins: “We are improving. The worst is over”. The Chavista narrative expressly addresses its militancy, the “revolutionary people.” He makes the traditional allusions to Simón Bolívar; reinforces the idea of an emancipatory feat against foreign powers and holds the opposition responsible for everything that happens in Venezuela based on the imposition of international sanctions. Caracas and other cities in the country have billboards displayed on their avenues and highways denouncing that the absence of medicines, the shortage of food, gasoline, or the failures of services are the responsibility of international sanctions, the United States and the Venezuelan opposition.
“Maduro has been trying to soften his image for two years, to be nice. A kind of soft dictator, a cool guy, with whom you can joke, who seeks acceptance,” says Carmen Beatriz Fernández, electoral consultant and professor at the University of Navarra and the Simón Bolívar University. “There is an important effort, well done in these two years, to be appreciated on social networks, Tik Tok content, consumed by the youngest,” Fernández continues. “The reality shows, the presentation of Superbigote. Maduro is trying to overcome the dark image of 2017. What happens is that the emergence of María Corina Machado’s leadership changed his agenda, making him reactive, desperate, sanctioning merchants who sell him empanadas or the hotel that gives them an inn. . Then, you see it explode.”
![A Superbigote botarga at a Maduro campaign rally, on June 8 in Caracas.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/v2/SLZWTC6LDII26DTWYASKK3X27Q.jpg?auth=cb8d36740ff8b6246d4bb61bde387a473058ff3fa15920921dffbef8bd7391b5&width=414)
“Chavismo looks for specific support groups in areas where it can obtain results,” adds Peche Arteaga. And she continues: “Pensioners and the elderly, through the Grandparents of the Homeland Mission, is a very obvious case; the political work with the evangelical Christian church, which has grown, and where there are many voters for Maduro and a clear commitment from the State.”
Peche highlights among the notable strategic decisions of the PSUV the creation of alternative electoral movements, loyal to the president’s cause, with a language different from the revolutionary one, the change from the color red to blue (usually used by the opposition) and the development of an agenda friendly and apparently democratic with the voice of its moderate figures. The civil movements Somos Venezuela, about 5 years ago, and Futuro, an organization led by the current governor of the state of Miranda, Héctor Rodríguez, are part of this effort.
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