VENEZUELA HAS AN OPPOSITION PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE. WHAT DOES THE MADURO REGIME HAVE TO SAY ABOUT IT?
By Maciej Stašinški *
Two million Venezuelans have decided that the well-known politician María Corina Machado will be the opposition candidate in the presidential elections scheduled for next year. But will the regime of Nicolás Maduro, which keeps the country under tight control, allow it?
The democratic opposition has carried out the primaries for presidential candidate on its own, not only without the help of the state electoral commission, but also against the boycott and hostility of the regime’s media and the resistance of the militias. In the capital, Caracas, and in other cities, people made long lines to deposit their vote; abroad, they did it online. About 2 million citizens participated in the vote.
With a result of 92%, Marina Corina Machado, who has been fighting against the Venezuelan regime for 20 years, won, first that of Hugo Chávez and then that of his successor Nicolás Maduro.
NICOLÁS MADURO HAS BEEN NEUTRALIZING THE OPPOSITION FOR YEARS
Machado, 55, has been a deputy on several occasions and is one of the most intransigent leaders of the fragmented and divided democratic opposition. He has accused his other representatives of being conciliatory with the country’s authorities, which he considers without hesitation a dictatorship. Machado has demanded the overthrow of Chávez and Maduro through street riots, or even by force, and has refused to negotiate with them.
The regime has already deprived her twice – under various pretexts – of her electoral rights and her right to hold public office, just as it did with other opposition leaders when they were in a position to threaten her electorally. This was the case with former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, the president of Parliament, Juan Guaidó, and the mayor of Caracas, Leopoldo López, among others.
The last time she was disqualified for 15 years was in June, on the pretext that she receives financial support from abroad and supports U.S. sanctions.
MARÍA CORINA MACHADO CALLS FOR THE RESTORATION OF DEMOCRACY
Undeterred by the repression, the politician decided that this time the best weapon against the one-party realism of Nicolás Maduro would be the vote: he ran for the opposition primaries and won by a devastating margin. Harassed by poverty, hopelessness and repression, Venezuelans decided that she was the best candidate to stand up to the oppressive government.
María Corina Machado demands the restoration of democracy, the relegation of political parties, the pluralism of the media and the restoration of the market economy and the return of Venezuela to the world market and international cooperation.
Among other things, he wants the privatization of the state oil monopoly PDVSA, which is the main source of income for the State, the return of companies and assets nationalized by Hugo Chávez, as well as the liberalization of the right to abortion, the legalization of same-sex marriage and marijuana for medicinal purposes.
IF THE ELECTIONS ARE REALLY FREE, NICOLÁS MADURO WILL LOSE
The regime will have a serious problem with Machado. Especially since the Government has just made an electoral pact with the opposition to hold free presidential elections – with the participation of its candidates – within a year. He has also promised to gradually release political prisoners and invite international observers to the elections.
In return, the United States promised to gradually lift economic sanctions that blocked, among other things, oil and gas exports to world markets. Today, Venezuela trades mainly with China, Russia, Iran, Belarus and several allies of the continent, including Cuba and Nicaragua.
But the authorities know very well that if the elections are really free, Nicolás Maduro or another candidate will lose to Machado.
VENEZUELA IN CHRONIC COLLAPSE
The regime keeps society under tight control, but is compromised by the economic disaster to which it has led itself and the systematic persecution of political opponents, for which it has been accused in the International Criminal Court.
In recent years, a chronic economic crisis, a GDP that has fallen several times (to levels of the 1990s), poverty and the persecution of opposition figures have pushed 7.7 million of the 30 million Venezuelans to leave the country in search of a better life.
Therefore, Vice President Diosdado Cabello declared that the opposition primaries did not count because they were “tangled” and Machado’s candidacy “could not pass.”
However, a vote in which there are only candidates elected by the Government will not be recognized by anyone in the West, not even on the continent (except Cuba and Nicaragua), as has happened so far. Thus, if Nicolás Maduro finally does not allow María Corina Machado’s candidacy to run for the elections, he runs the risk of breaking the agreement with the opposition and tightening the sanctions. The country would then sink even deeper into international isolation and economic collapse.
* Maciej Stasiński, a Polish journalist, is the International Head of the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper.
This text was originally published in the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.
