Caracas – Although María Corina Machado’s victory in the opposition primaries in Venezuela was not surprising, citizen participation exceeded expectations, although the ruling party questions the opposition’s figures. The consultation, which had to face multiple obstacles to its completion, now generates great uncertainty, given that the person chosen as the opposition presidential candidate for the 2024 elections has been disqualified from holding public office for 15 years and, as an aspirant, faces the challenge of achieving unity in anti-Chavismo.
Relocation of electoral centers, intimidation of voters by armed groups in popular areas, siege of polling station members, blockades that prevented citizens from locating their voting places on information portals and pressure on the media not to cover the election. election were some of the adversities reported during the opposition consultation in Venezuela, this Sunday, October 22.
The main irregularities reported in these primaries, the first since 2012, occurred in popular areas of the center and west of Caracas, where Chavismo formerly concentrated its forces.
The National Primary Commission of the opposition, the body in charge of the consultation, also denounced the blocking of the server used for data transmission, which delayed until midnight the issuance of the first bulletin that gave María Corina Machado the winner with more than 93% of the votes counted up to that point.
The vote was marked by an unexpected participation since even the three million voting ballots that had been printed for the day were sold out.
“That is the most important qualitative data, precisely the participation of the popular sectors. Particularly in Caracas, I think that this overturns what the analysts said that the country was demobilized and the people were not informed, since it has turned out that this is not the case. And secondly, it destroys the myth that María Corina Machado is a candidate who does not penetrate the neighborhoods and popular sectors,” historian Pedro Benítez told France 24 after analyzing the results of the internal opposition consultation.
With support that would exceed two million votes in the consultation – although the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela accused the opposition of “inflating the numbers” – uncertainty remains. Will María Corina Machado be able to register as a candidate in the 2024 presidential elections when she is disqualified from holding public office for the next 15 years?
Machado’s disqualification marks the post-primary scenarios
In the opinion of the analyst and president of the polling firm Datanalisis, Luis Vicente León, there are at least two possible scenarios after the opposition primaries.
The first is “that María Corina Machado tries to pressure her authorization in any way possible, and if she does not succeed, try to cause the collapse of the Maduro Government through protests and streets defending her right to participate.” A scenario that she considers “will be repelled by Maduro and would increase the probability that there will be no election, or at least a legitimate election, and high levels of abstention will occur.”
The second scenario would be “that the elected candidate demands to name the final substitute for the race,” which in turn could generate more divisions in the opposition.
In this regard, Luis Vicente León affirms that, precisely, the primaries do not solve the problem of the lack of unity in the opposition. “With the primary, the candidate of only one of the parties has been launched, but not of all. There will be other candidates, and at least one, Benjamín Rausseo (Venezuelan comedian and businessman), with a little more strength than the others, to face María Corina Machado. We don’t know how that process will evolve in the future,” he added.
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Opposition unity, challenge from María Corina Machado
For Pedro Benítez, professor at the Central University of Venezuela, this is the beginning of a new chapter, in which Machado stopped being a marginal factor in the Venezuelan political scene to be the central actress.
“A whole dispute is going to start here to get her authorization, which imposes an enormous responsibility on her and the only way I see that she can reverse this situation or use it in favor of political change in Venezuela is through a unitary strategy. , adding all the sectors that competed with her within the primary, making a block of unity and then going out to look for all the sectors that did not participate with her in the primary but that agree on preventing the continuation of Nicolás Maduro in the exercise of the Presidency. Failure to do so will contribute to further dividing the opposition and weakening the possibility of political change in the country,” said Benítez.
![Polling station members begin counting votes during the closing of the election day for the opposition primaries, in Caracas (Venezuela).](https://s.france24.com/media/display/7115b202-7159-11ee-bbf8-005056bf30b7/b181433bf8fb1abaf27bde72460028234d02a958w.jpg)
For the historian, the right thing to do would be to put together a great coalition or a front against Maduro’s re-election with the political capital and mandate that Machado received. “Politics is the art of the possible, politics gives unusual alliances, whoever understands that is the winner,” he adds.
And although the expert considers that the opposition is able to capitalize on the enormous discontent with Maduro and his Government, he warns that it should not be ignored that on the other side is the control of weapons and the power of the State. “This is not a war that has already been won, but one that is just beginning,” he told France 24.
The role of the United States in the negotiation
The opposition primaries could finally be carried out after the support received during the negotiations between the Government and the opposition in Barbados, with the support of the United States.
On October 17, within the framework of this dialogue, the Government of Nicolás Maduro committed to the opposition to work on an electoral schedule and to review the disqualifications.
In this scenario, the United States called on the Venezuelan Government to reverse the disqualifications of political opponents in exchange for maintaining the lifting of economic sanctions.
![Jorge Rodríguez President of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Gerardo Blyde Delegate of the Venezuelan opposition, Efraín Guadarrama Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and Dag Nylander Director of the Norwegian Center for Conflict Resolution sign an agreement during the National Assembly of Venezuela Conversations between government and opposition at the Lloyd Erskine Sandiford Center in Two Mile Hill, Saint Michael, Barbados, on October 17, 2023. Venezuela's government and opposition said on October 16 that they will restart talks to end the crisis political and economic of the country, after almost a year-long suspension.](https://s.france24.com/media/display/f9cf00c8-70fd-11ee-9555-005056a90284/000_33YK6RL.jpg)
In this regard, Gerardo Blyde, head of the negotiating delegation of the opposition Unitary Platform, confirmed that one of the points of the agreement signed between the Government and the opposition in Barbados on October 17 contemplated “a route for the disqualified and the political parties to recover their rights quickly.”
However, two days later, the head of the official delegation, Jorge Rodríguez, publicly stated that “a disqualified person will not be able to participate in the upcoming presidential elections,” once again closing that possibility.
We categorically insist, Venezuela will not accept pressure, blackmail or any type of interference in internal affairs. We will continue to respect and defend the word pledged and embodied in the partial agreements signed in Barbados. No blackmail! pic.twitter.com/cNMue7EvRi
— Jorge Rodríguez (@jorgerpsuv) October 20, 2023
With this announcement and after the result of the primaries, it will be essential to see what María Corina Machado’s relationship will now be like with the opposition delegation that has been in talks with the Government of Nicolás Maduro for more than a year and a half. A negotiation from which Machado has distanced himself and has even publicly rejected, but which, in turn, allowed last Sunday’s internal consultation to materialize.
After midnight on Sunday, and after a devastating victory, María Corina Machado said that she assumed with each of the Venezuelans the commitment to enforce that mandate that she received this October 22. Convinced of being able to defeat President Nicolás Maduro at the polls, she pointed out: “This is not the end, it is the beginning of the end.”
Last April marked ten years since the election of Nicolás Maduro as president of Venezuela in the elections called after the death of Hugo Chávez.
After a first term in government, Maduro was re-elected in 2018 in the presidential elections with the lowest participation in Venezuela, with little representation of the opposition and whose conditions generated rejection from several countries.
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