Venezuela goes to the polls this Sunday in the midst of great historical urgency, as if the country were at a crossroads. The permanence in power of Chavismo, which has ruled the destiny of the nation for 25 years, is in question by this presidential election, the sixth since Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998. At the Miraflores Palace, the tropical neo-baroque style headquarters of the government, full of paintings and busts of Simon Bolivar and Chavez himself, they do not understand how this critical situation has been reached. Stupefaction spreads in its corridors. “A proper risk analysis was not carried out,” says a leader of the PSUV, the ruling party. President Nicolas Maduro and his advisors, all of them hardened in high-voltage electoral processes, thought a couple of months ago that they had everything under control. It was a mirage.
They did not take into account that the opposition, after a series of defeats and internal fights, had also learned along the way. The confirmation in January of this year of the disqualification of María Corina Machado, the visible face of the anti-Chavez supporters, the name that in the polls was ahead of Maduro, could have ended the threat, cleared the way for Chavismo. However, Machado gave up his place to Edmundo González, an unknown 74-year-old diplomat who, at this point in his life, had planned to spend quiet afternoons reading on the sofa at home, while from the window he watched the macaws cross the sky of Caracas. But then, Machado touched him on the shoulder and told him that this was his time, his moment, and together they began to travel Venezuela from end to end. Machado has taken her hand and lifted her up on long avenues in provincial cities. He, a Christian Democrat; she, a pragmatic liberal. Maduro has followed a similar path surrounded by the hardest core of Chavismo, which insists that the worst years of economic crisis are over and that only its continuation guarantees political and social peace in the country.
At this point, only one can win. Maduro or Edmundo, Edmundo or Maduro. The numbers from the most reliable pollsters give the opposition the victory, some with a large margin of difference. There are analysts who downplay this euphoria by detecting bias in the survey, but they also mark a victory for Edmundo. Chavismo has handled its own polls that warned it of its moment of weakness, after a quarter of a century in power with much wear and tear. A part of the electorate that has been faithful to it during this time has become disenchanted and even the most orthodox Chavistas – 10% of them, according to a survey – raise the possibility of change. Maduro has acknowledged in his rallies his mistakes and his lack of speed in detecting at the very heart of his Government a case of corruption by his oil minister, Tareck El Aissami, valued at more than 3 billion dollars. However, he is asking for a vote of confidence, arguing that the economy has been growing steadily since 2021 (this year, GDP will grow by 4%) and threatening that a defeat would trigger an armed conflict. Those close to him admit that they did not expect to face figures like those from Edmundo, but, according to his measurements that have not been made public, Maduro is reaching the final stretch with an eight-point advantage.
That has not prevented the widespread feeling within Chavismo that a defeat is a real possibility, something that until a few months ago seemed impossible. The Bolivarian revolution controls all the institutions, all the levers of power. For the most radicalized Chavismo, such as Diosdado Cabello, the vice president of the party, leaving now would be a betrayal of Chávez’s ideals, a revolutionary surrender. Although the numbers are not favorable to them, that possibility does not enter into their mental framework. This thesis is shared by others close to Maduro, such as Jorge Rodríguez, his main political operator, who maintain that a victory for Edmundo would be the “arrival of fascism, a form of invasion by the United States.” On the other side, a more moderate Chavismo with a somewhat more democratic disposition that represents a younger generation that has studied abroad, speaks languages and wears tracksuits less. The former see the latter as spoiled, scruffy, soft children who have not carried a rifle on their shoulders or protested against right-wing governments in the 80s. However, this Chavismo 2.0 chooses to normalize the political life of the country and accept alternation, as in other countries in the region. That would even involve being an opposition and refounding the movement from there. Although the veterans are the ones who have the power and the last word, the internal debate has ignited like never before.
Under scrutiny, the entire Venezuelan electoral system. The National Electoral Council (CNE), the arbiter of these elections, is controlled by Chavismo with a simple majority of rectors. It is led by Elvis Amoroso, someone very close to Maduro and Cilia Flores, the first lady, who has shown signs of partiality during the campaign. Can the results of this Sunday be altered? Difficult. With the support of opposition parties, Chavismo devised an automated voting system to avoid cheating. At that time, it feared that the establishment The electoral process is not a matter of the fact that the government that had governed until then had stolen from them. Now, this tool shields what may happen today: the voting machines and the printed records are reliable. Where the contest is uneven in favor of the ruling party is in everything that surrounds the electoral process. Maduro has taken up every minute on radio and television, his image is everywhere. With public money, a fictionalized five-episode series has been made, with a Hollywood-style finish. The night in Caracas was filled on Thursday with drones that, united and illuminated, drew his name in the starry sky.
Furthermore, Chavismo has a geolocalized system with the homes of all public employees and their families. They will know if they go out to vote or not. The activists of the movement spread the idea in the neighborhoods that voting for the opposition could take away their social assistance and marginalize them when it comes to finding work. That is why, at the end of the campaign, Edmundo insisted on this message: “The vote is secret, nobody will know who you voted for.” Analysts such as Luis Vicente León maintain that this mobilization could be enough for Maduro to obtain the votes that allow him to remain in power for another six years, until 2030. “The foreign correspondents who have been to my house these days only have two possibilities in mind: either Edmundo wins or fraud has been committed. And no, gentlemen. Maduro, numerically, with all these electoral tricks, could also win,” explains León.
Venezuelans vote with the police in the street and at the more than 15,700 points (with 30,026 voting tables) open throughout the country. In addition to the uniformed military personnel of the Plan República, the police forces were activated, an atypical measure. Venezuela usually quarters its civil security officials during this process and leaves the protection in the hands of the Armed Forces, including the Bolivarian Militia. María De Freitas noticed this in her center, a school in the center of Caracas. The woman says that there were no new developments in the process, except for the presence of police officers accompanying the Plan República officers, who are in charge of guarding the electoral material and the only ones who should be inside the voting centers.
For several weeks now, there has been a narrative circulating within Chavismo about alleged plans by the opposition to create unrest during the elections and boycott the process. This has led to the deployment of 380,000 military and police officers for the election, plus military reserves. “To deal with situations of restoration and control of public order,” according to Interior and Defense authorities. The incidents, in the midst of the campaign, have gained a lot of air on social networks, but are minimal if one looks at the whole map, as pointed out by the leader of the Unitary Platform, Delsa Solórzano, designated national witness of the coalition that supports the candidacy of Edmundo González Urrutia. In particular, on this occasion, the famous “collectives,” the armed squads of paramilitary training of Chavismo, who used to harass opposition protesters, have been conspicuous by their absence. They have not been seen.
Many consider that this Sunday is only the beginning of a great political process. The truly important thing will begin the following day, Monday. If Maduro wins, he will have to demonstrate transparency so that the rest of the world recognizes him and he can get out of the international pariah situation in which he finds himself. The lifting of sanctions is urgent for the country’s economy. The president has said that he will seek a political agreement, an understanding with the opposition. This has also been demanded of him by presidents of the countries around him with whom he has a certain ideological affinity, such as Gustavo Petro, Lula Da Silva and Gabriel Boric. The leaders of Colombia, Brazil and Chile have tried to get him to sign a document of acceptance of the results until the week before the vote. They assured him that with this commitment, with his signature and that of Edmundo, they could defend Maduro in the eyes of the world, which would have no choice but to recognize him as a democratic and not an authoritarian president, as he is now considered. The volatility of the situation, however, led Maduro to ignore this draft.
The most uncertain scenario opens up in the case of an opposition victory. From there, the unknown. Edmundo and Machado have proposed a serene change, without traumas or legal persecutions. The architects of this possible transition are speculating about a possible amnesty for the Chavista leaders, since many of them have international arrest warrants or are wanted by the DEA. According to sources from the ruling party, Chavismo would like this transition to take place with the military as guarantors and always with an unmovable condition, a red line: Machado cannot be part of the government in any case. It would be practically six months of coexistence between the outgoing president, Maduro, and the incoming one, Edmundo, until January 10. Edmundo would be the new authority in a completely Chavista world, surrounded by red shirts and effigies of Chavez. Through the wide windows of Miraflores he would no longer see blue birds, but the presidential guard stationed at the entrance. His crossed destinies as a serene reader of classics or as president of a troubled nation begin to be decided this Sunday.
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América on Facebook and Xor in our weekly newsletter.
