These days there is a sense of historical urgency in Venezuela. After 25 years of Chavismo, for the first time the possibility of a change of course for the country is glimpsed. The presidential elections of July 28, barring an unexpected turn, are going to be held and the consensus candidate of the opposition, Edmundo González Urrutia, has an advantage – according to the most reliable polls – against his official rival, President Nicolás Ripe. However, the road from here to voting day can be bumpy and the hours after a virtual victory for the opposition seem even more complex.
According to a widespread opinion among analysts, Chavismo will not facilitate a transition. The self-proclaimed Bolivarian revolution invented by Commander Hugo Chávez Frías, once an authoritarian president in a democratic context, lost much popular support after his death from a very aggressive cancer in 2013 and has been increasingly reduced over the years under the command of his successor, Maduro. That has not prevented the ruling party, today, from controlling all the institutions of the State, from justice to the military forces. Despite everything, the Government has not completely broken with the outside world in the manner of Cuba and Nicaragua. In these years it has negotiated with the opposition and with the United States some frameworks of understanding and that is how these very peculiar elections have been organized.
Maduro should face Maria Corina Machado, who swept the opposition primaries. Machado became a political phenomenon from then on, capable of attracting a good part of the electorate. Chavismo disqualified her and does not allow her to run in the elections, but that has not stopped her: she ended up appointing Edmundo Gonzalez and has given him all her political capital. This 74-year-old diplomat, who resisted being elected by the opposition due to his lack of desire to take on a task of this size, has gone from being a complete unknown to making the phrase “I am not a candidate for president.” Everyone with Edmundo“Edmundo has more than 50% of voting intention because he captures more than 90% of María Corina’s vote. Maduro is close to his limits in public opinion, which is around 3 out of 10 Venezuelans registered in the electoral register who are in Venezuela. There is a significant difference,” explains Luis Vidal, political scientist, data expert and director of More consulting, a public opinion analysis company.
The ruling party is aware of that distance that is difficult to recover in these 30 days. For the first time in two decades, he has lost the electoral initiative. Diosdado Cabello, the vice president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the formation of the Government, then visits the cities and regions through which Machado and Edmundo campaign. Maduro has begun to reprimand his ministers in public for work poorly done, as Chávez did in his daily program on public television, and opposes his government more fiercely than the opponents themselves. . “We must reinvent the State, put an end to corruption, to put an end to apathy,” he said a few days ago at an event. Maduro, more than a year ago, expelled from his circle Tareck El Aissami, Chávez’s right eye in his youth and one of the most powerful people in Venezuela. He was Minister of Petroleum, so he controlled the largest public company in the country, the PDVSA oil company, when the prosecutor’s office revealed a gigantic corruption case in which dozens of Chavista officials fell, including El Aissami – estimated at more than 3,000 million. of dollars the embezzlement in PDVSA.
The fear among the opponents is that Edmundo will continue to lead and Chavismo will disqualify him as it did with Machado. But that might be too obvious, believes Vidal. If that happened, the international community would not recognize the electoral process. More than that: Maduro would recognize that he is afraid and that he would not see himself as a winner with an opposition candidate who was not even the first nor the second option (Machado first chose the academic Corina Yoris, but she was also sanctioned), but the third . For this reason, says Vidal, the ruling party could withdraw the card of the MUD, the opposition group, and Edmundo would only be represented by two parties – Maduro has 13, so his face appears 13 times on the electoral ballot. In practice, what would this mean? “Very important groups of people, especially those who do not have social networks and live in rural areas, would not find out about that decision and would vote for the MUD and that vote would be null. The Government has options to harm Edmundo greatly without needing to prevent him from appearing,” adds Vidal.
There are analysts, such as Luis Vicente León, who believe that numerically Chavismo could win. Adding loyalists, public sector workers, contractors and close associates, he calculates that it could add up to almost five million. If the abstention is high and the eleven million votes are not exceeded, Maduro, in this case, would have many options to win because there are another three or four opponents who have not joined Edmundo and between them they can add up to one or two million votes. Enough to disperse the opposition. León has received a lot of criticism from opposition sectors for doing this math. Oswaldo Ramírez, on the other hand, believes that people “expect a change.” “That expectation is installed in the population,” says the political consultant.
Ramírez believes that a victory for Edmundo would lead to “the most complicated hours.” Chavismo, he adds, would not give up power because it is a power in itself. The transfer of power would not be until January 2025 and the National Assembly, in the hands of Chavismo, will continue to govern until January 5, 2026. More: the entire country is full of mayors and governors of the revolutionary movement. At that stage, Ramírez predicts, a negotiation process could open that would allow “opening the doors to a process of reconciliation and shared power.” That is, taking a step towards democratic normality. But all this is venturing too far. Scenarios that no one has in mind can open up, the least expected can happen. “It is better to live one day at a time,” recommends the analyst.
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