The Venezuelan opposition is looking for a rival for Maduro. Twenty-one million Venezuelans choose at the polls this Sunday in Venezuela and abroad among 10 candidates in a consultation in which the conservative María Corina Machado is the great favorite. These primaries are held after the Government of Nicolás Maduro and the opposition agreed this week in Barbados to respect the constitutional calendar and hold the presidential elections in the second half of 2024. A day later, the United States eased sanctions on the oil and gas sector. gas until six months from now, which will only be extended if Maduro continues taking steps to restore democracy in the country and allows an opposition candidate to truly challenge him for power.
The road to holding this consultation has been long and bumpy. The Government has not made it easier for its celebration, maintaining an ambiguous attitude with the National Electoral Council (CNE), only offering its help at the last minute. In the end, the opponents themselves, supported by the parties and civil society, have been in charge of the logistics, which has raised many doubts. Voting takes place in 3,010 centers and 5,134 voting stations in Venezuela, and in 28 countries, including Germany, Colombia, Mexico, Ireland, Norway, Spain and the United States. The deployment is huge and the difficulties are not few. Venezuelans in their country who want to participate must find their voting center on a website that they can only access through VPN, since internet service providers have blocked access.
The opposition has never managed to stay united against Chavismo, and the primaries have been no exception. One of the country’s most renowned opponents, Henrique Capriles, resigned two weeks ago alleging that he is disqualified and cannot run for president. Another party, Fuerza Vecinal, proposed that the consultation be suspended. There are those who have also decided not to join this purpose and have announced that they will appear on their own, such as Manuel Rosales, governor of Zulia, an opponent who coexists peacefully with Chavismo. The Government, throughout these 20 years in power, first with Hugo Chávez and then with Maduro, has benefited from the continuous internal disputes between the opponents.
Machado’s more than likely victory opens up many other questions. The politician received a veto from the control a few months ago that prevents her from running as a presidential candidate. What will happen if she wins? The Barbados agreement says that authorization will be promoted “for all candidates and political parties” so that they can participate in the 2024 elections, but at the same time it is warned that this will be “as long as the requirements established by the law”. Analysts believe that, under no circumstances, will Chavismo allow Machado to face Maduro in elections, who scores low in the polls. And even less one in which there will be international observers, as has been agreed. The idea is that in free and fair elections, Maduro would have everything to lose, because doubts persist about the real progress of these latest agreements.
Barinas’ strategy
A part of the opposition believes that the best option to circumvent the sanctions is to apply the strategy of Barinas, the native region of Hugo Chávez in which an opposition party won by surprise in the regional elections at the end of 2021. The winner, Freddy Superlano , was retroactively disqualified and the Superior Court of Justice ordered the elections to be repeated. The issue was more than symbolic because the Chavista candidate was Jorge Arreaza, Chávez’s former son-in-law. The opponents were presenting candidates from the Superlano circle and, one by one, they were expressly incapacitated by the CNE, Chavismo’s strategy to get rid of competitors.
Join EL PAÍS to follow all the news and read without limits.
Subscribe
In the end, one was accepted, Sergio Garrido, who faced Arreaza in January 2022. And he beat him. It was shown that the important thing was not the name on the ballot, but that the opposition was united. Those opponents who believe that this tactic—presenting names until Chavismo is forced to accept one—could be successful do not know the position that Machado is going to take, whether he will step aside if she is not authorized or whether he will prevent someone from replacing her. It has also not been clear that if she were finally prevented from registering as a candidate, her position would be occupied by the second in the primaries.
The consultation has not had the wind in its favor. Organizers have had many impediments when setting up voting centers. There are places that are being relocated due to pressure from the Government on the institutions that have provided them. It is also expected to be a rainy day, so voting points that are on the street and do not have an awning could be in danger. And there are also problems with media coverage. The National Press Union has reported that journalists and radio media directors have been pressured to suspend their limited coverage of the process starting Friday night. In any case, in the latest polls carried out by Delphos a week ago, 66.7% of the population said they were willing to attend the elections this Sunday, although of that group only 20% said they had a high or very high probability of do it.
The primaries arrive at a moment of opening in Venezuela. The United States has reached out to Maduro with the partial lifting of sanctions that will undoubtedly help improve the battered local economy. On his day, the Venezuelan president said there would be no free elections in 2024 if the country was not free of sanctions. Now that Washington has taken a first step, it is Maduro’s turn to make a move. Hours after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) authorized transactions related to oil and gas sector operations, Maduro released five political prisoners, including journalist Roland Carreño, who had been imprisoned for three years. . The rapprochement between the two countries tacitly includes that Chavismo respects the primaries and does the same with next year’s presidential elections.
In that race, there must be a consensus opposition candidate who emerges from this Sunday’s consultation. It would be the first time in 10 years that the opponents appear united to defeat Chavismo. It remains to be seen whether in these elections they will compete with guarantees and on equal terms – something that seems unlikely – but at least they will have done their job. This time, not attending so as not to play into the hands of Chavismo, which happened in the 2020 parliamentary elections, has not been an option.
Subscribe here to newsletter from EL PAÍS América and receive all the key information on current events in the region
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
_
#Venezuelan #opposition #holds #primaries #seeks #rival #Maduro #elections