With less than 80 days until the presidential elections in Venezuela, the National Electoral Council has revealed the card against which Venezuelans will decide the future of the political crisis in the South American country. In the image of the electronic ballot, Nicolás Maduro appears 13 times, wearing a tie and smiling, occupying a third of the available boxes. On the other hand, his main rival, Edmundo González Urrutia, the name that the opposition has finally registered due to the disqualification of the chosen one in primaries María Corina Machado, appears only in three places and the militants of the Unitary Platform are now starting a crusade to explain to the electorate how to vote for the candidate who represents the political force that the majority of Venezuelans support.
The card leaves traces of the strategies that Chavismo has applied to block the way from any possibility of losing power. One of the new elements is the update that the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has made and that has been transversal to Maduro’s campaign. The watchful eyes of Hugo Chávez, which for years became omnipresent memorabilia of Chavismo, displayed on billboards, buildings and official letterheads, and were later banished in one of Maduro’s attempts to consolidate his own leadership outside the shadow of the commander of The Bolivarian revolution has returned. The new Chávez that appears in the PSUV box is the face of the old smiling Chávez, built on a blue background. Of the thirteen boxes that support it, at least five correspond to parties that in the past rallied around the revolution and due to differences with the Madurismo ended up being judicially intervened. Their ad hoc boards are the ones that control those cards.
The opposition has been activated to inform how people should vote, because in a country with censorship, disconnected due to the precariousness of services and with little means of communication, the table is set for voter confusion, almost like a video game board. minesweeper. The box of Edmundo González Urrutia of the Democratic Unity Table, known as the the little hand, since its logo has a thumb raised in approval under the word unity, it is in the entire center of the card. It is not the only card that has that word on the card. The candidates Antonio Ecarri and José Brito are also supported by organizations that use that inscription as part of their symbols. In the case of Brito, considered one of the main scorpions, he also appears in the Primero Justicia box, an opposition awning that is a member of the Unitary Platform and the home of leader Henrique Capriles Radonsky, but which ended up being confiscated from its leadership and handed over to Brito after a decision issued by the Supreme Court of Justice last month.
Until recently, the candidate of the opposition united in the Unitary Platform and the leadership of Machado was a total unknown. It appears between the face of Luis Eduardo Martínez, the candidate of a faction of Democratic Action co-opted by Chavismo, and that of Daniel Ceballos, a former politician who has distanced himself from his grassroots formation Voluntad Popular, the party of Leopoldo López and Juan Guaidó. , although in that position on the card it appears as postulated by that same party, also intervened and taken by leaders who have agreed on their survival with Chavismo. González Urrutia also obtained the support of Un Nuevo Tiempo, Manuel Rosales’ party that renounced his candidacy to support him, and the Progressive Movement of Venezuela.
For statistician Félix Seijas, from the Delphos polling firm, the fact that González Urrutia does not travel through the country does not matter at this point. “In 2015, with the parliamentarians, what did the opposition win, who was the candidate. It was the little hand, the unit,” he explains. “People understand that this is a bet between the Unitary Platform and María Corina Machado and they value the fact that two separate things can be agreed upon.” The opposition’s challenge is in articulating the voting care structure around a leadership without large machinery, but that could add those of the coalition, and also to deal with any new setbacks that may occur even on the same day. of the election that could generate confusion and end up demobilizing or depriving the opposition of votes.
Maduro now retains between 20 and 22% of voting intentions and has been rising, according to the most recent measurements by Seijas. Hard Chavismo is concentrated at 15%, which is equivalent to 2,000,000 votes, the same number that Machado managed to get in the primary. But his voting potential is currently 30%. A sector of the so-called soft Chavismo, the least radical, remains demobilized and the campaign that uses the slogan seems to be directed towards them. Hope is in the street, a phrase that has gravitated in the narrative around Hugo Chávez and that has been reinforced in this campaign using the iconography of Chávez with a military beret with which Chavismo began. An idea that tries to position Chavismo that has not been matched by large mobilizations of followers.
Seijas emphasizes that most of the 80% who want political change want it because they seek better living conditions. The economic factor is what moves the balance. Chavismo has not yet reached the 25% approval rate it reached during the slight recovery in 2022. But it is doing what it can. The crusade against corruption in PDVSA is part of it, as well as the new laws to assign to the private sector the responsibility of financing pensions for the elderly, one of the hardest hit sectors in a country that aged rapidly because a large part of its young people have emigrated. In the most recent Delphos surveys, 22% of those surveyed have plans to leave the country. Although having plans, Seijas warns, does not necessarily imply that they will leave, the threat of a greater exodus of Venezuelans in the face of a new stagnation of the situation in Venezuela is what has ended up putting, especially the neighboring governments and the United States, in a same line so that the presidential elections of July 28 truly bring us closer to a solution to a crisis that is already too long and costly.
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