On Sunday, voters in the South American nation of Venezuela will take part in what could be one of the most important elections in the country’s modern history.
After 11 years in power, President Nicolás Maduro faces great difficulties as he seeks a third term against opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Research shows Maduro is nearly 40 points behind Gonzalez as voters express exhaustion with Venezuela’s economic crisis and political repression.
But critics question whether Maduro will accept defeat if he is in fact defeated at the polls. The socialist leader was accused of using his power to suppress potential rivals, arresting some and preventing others from holding office.
Who are the candidates, what developments have we seen so far and under what circumstances will the vote be held? We answer these questions and more in this short explainer.
When will the election be?
The election will take place on July 28, the birthday of the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor.
What do pre-election polls show?
Maduro appears to be trailing his rival Gonzalez by a seemingly insurmountable margin.
Polling firm ORC Consultores shows Maduro with 12.5% support, compared to Gonzalez’s impressive 59.6%.
Another poll by data firm Delphos and Universidade Católica Andrés Bello showed Maduro with a slightly higher approval rating, around 25 percent. But he again fell far behind Gonzalez, who also received more than 59% support in that poll.
Why is Maduro so unpopular?
Maduro has long struggled to match the popularity of his predecessor, Chávez.
Since the mid-2010s, Venezuela’s economy has been in trouble as the price of its main export, oil, has plummeted.
The economic crisis triggered hyperinflation and severe economic tensions. An exodus of people began to leave the country in search of opportunities elsewhere. Some critics have also blamed Maduro and his allies for corruption and economic mismanagement.
Sanctions imposed by the United States — in response to alleged human rights violations and democratic setbacks — worsened the economic crisis, according to experts.
Laura Dib, director of the Venezuela program at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a US-based research and advocacy group, told Al Jazeera that people in the country are desperate for an improvement in overwhelming economic circumstances. .
“The minimum wage in Venezuela may be around $130 a month, but what a family needs just to cover their basic needs is around $500,” she said.
How many people left the country?
Perhaps the best indicator of how dire the economic situation has become is the number of people leaving the country.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), more than 7.7 million have left the country since 2014, in one of the largest cases of mass displacement in modern history. Around 2,000 people continue to leave every day.
Some experts fear that number could rise if Maduro claims victory in a third consecutive election.
Who is running?
Maduro, the 61-year-old successor to former President Chávez, is seeking a third six-year term as the United Socialist Party candidate.
He seeks to continue Chávez’s legacy of offering social programs to the poor and taking an antagonistic stance toward the US.
Facing Maduro is a group of opposition parties calling themselves the Unitary Platform coalition.
The coalition brings together a range of political opinions, but its defining objective is to end Maduro’s period in power and improve relations with the West. By winning sanctions relief and boosting investment, Unitary Platform officials hope to improve conditions in Venezuela, allowing members of the diaspora to return home.
The opposition is represented at the polls by Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat.
For his part, Maduro has painted the opposition as puppets of foreign powers that would privatize social programs that many poor residents depend on for economic support.
What happened the last time Maduro ran?
The opposition sat out the 2018 elections in protest against what it considered to be a biased electoral system. Maduro ended up winning the elections with more than 67% of the votes.
But groups such as the Organization of American States warned that the elections failed to meet standards of a “free, fair, transparent and democratic process,” and observers noted that voter turnout reached a record high.
Was this year’s electoral process fair?
In short, no.
Although the opposition is competing with Gonzalez at the top of the ticket, he was not the coalition’s first choice to take the lead.
In fact, he wasn’t even the second choice. Gonzalez was chosen only after the government banned popular opposition figure Maria Corina Machado from competing in the elections, as well as Corina Yoris, who was initially named as her replacement.
Other opposition figures were detained before the vote on charges that critics say are false.
In January, Venezuela’s Supreme Court upheld the decision that prevented Machado from holding public office for 15 years.
How does the government defend these actions?
The government defended its decision by claiming that opposition figures like Machado were involved in efforts to overthrow Maduro and encouraged US sanctions against Venezuela.
Although Machado continues to be widely popular, these accusations translate into anxiety over the US’ record of support for efforts to undermine the Caracas government and install a new, more Washington-friendly one.
Maduro and his allies also accused Machado of being corrupt.
How “free” are elections in Venezuela?
Machado’s ban from holding political office drew widespread condemnation, especially after she won the opposition primaries last October in a landslide.
Since Maduro came to power, confidence in the legitimacy of elections has fallen dramatically, with only 26 percent of voters said they were confident in the fairness of the elections in 2023, down from 59 percent in 2012.
Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the US-based Council on Foreign Relations, said Venezuela could be classified as “competitively authoritarian”, with elections taking place under severely restricted circumstances.
“This is not considered a fair election, but neither is Nicaragua,” he said, referring to the government of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, which led a harsh crackdown on opposition figures and dissidents.
“While it is true that Maria Corina Machado, the winner of the primaries, was arbitrarily banned from running, that the replacement her party chose was banned, there are still other opposition candidates,” Freeman added. “So it’s partly free, but quite unfair.”
Will Maduro step down if he loses?
While the opposition has reason to be optimistic about its chances, there is deep anxiety about what might happen if Maduro faces defeat.
Many fear that Maduro could simply declare victory or take even more drastic measures to stay in power. Maduro himself said at a rally on July 17 that there could be a “civil war” if he did not achieve victory.
“Regardless of whether there is a transition to Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, some kind of repression within the Maduro government, or if Maduro remains in power in a very blunt violation of the electoral process, in any of these three scenarios you will face challenges,” said Dib, director of WOLA’s Venezuela program.
“We also have a period of six months between these elections and the moment when whoever wins the elections will take power, so this period will also be very delicate”, he added.
What did other countries say about the elections?
Western countries, especially the US, have openly criticized the Venezuelan government’s repressive actions.
But there are signs that the US, long open about its desire to see Venezuela’s socialist government replaced, is trying to soften its stance after decades of political and economic tensions.
Last October, the US agreed to ease some sanctions on the country’s beleaguered oil sector, partly in hopes of increasing oil production in a context of rising global prices and partly in exchange for progress towards free elections.
The US also hopes that improving economic conditions can help reduce the number of Venezuelans seeking refuge within its borders.
“The risk that more people may flee is also a major concern for other countries in the region, especially Colombia, which received around 35 percent of this amount. [migrating] population, but of course also for the USA”, said Dibs.
However, following the suspension of Machado’s presidential campaign and the arrest of several opposition members, US President Joe Biden’s administration reimposed some, but not all, of the relaxed sanctions.
Other governments in the region, including those critical of US sanctions, have also called on Maduro to respect the will of voters.
“I told Maduro that the only chance for Venezuela to return to normality is to have a widely respected electoral process,” Brazil’s left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said in a statement this month.
“He has to respect the democratic process.”
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
