Nicols Maduro, 61, of the Americas: After a Fair Election, Democracy is Hard to Break: The Story of a Realistic Venezuela
Despite a deeply unfair election, Nicols Maduro seems to have survived once more. The outcome is a disappointment to the opposition and millions of citizens of Venezuela who have been waiting for democratic change. The election was a crucial test of the durability of the new brand of authoritarianism gripping the Americas — and it has proved that the movement may not fade away anytime soon.
Maduro, 61, is facing off against an opposition that has managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
The supreme court of the country ruled that Machado can’t be a candidate for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was barred from running for president, she took a college professor as her substitute on the ballot and was barred from registration. Gonzlez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Venezuela’s election is a fulcrum moment for the Americas. There were many reports of voter intimidation at voting centers despite high turnout. Nevertheless, with 80 percent of the votes counted, the nation’s electoral council declared Mr. Maduro the winner with 51.2 percent of the vote compared with 44.2 percent for his main rival. The opposition had no right to point to a different outcome because they were not given paper copies of the vote tally.
Venezuela is the world’s largest proven oil reserves and once boasted the most advanced economy in Latin America. After they took the helm, it plunged into a free fall. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.
Economic sanctions from the U.S. seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.
In his pitch to voters, which he attempted to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates, he talked about economic security. The International Monetary Fund sees the economy growing 4% this year after having shrunk from 2012 to 2020, one of the fastest in Latin America.
The quality of life in Venezuela has not improved. Families struggle to afford essentials when they earn less than $200 a month. Some people work second and third jobs. The basics of food, which comprise a basket of basic stapled items, cost an estimated $385.
The election will have a domino effect across the Americas because the government’s supporters and opponents both want to leave the country should Maduro be re-elected.
“The ballot boxes express what the streets said during these past few months of campaigning,” Maduro’s son, lawmaker Nicolas Maduro Guerra, said on X as night fell on the capital. “Victory for the Venezuelan people.”
Vice President Harris was the one who offered her support. The people of Venezuela have expressed their will, and Harris said that the US stands with them.
Machado was careful not to claim victory before authorities announce results but said she had already received copies of some official voting tallies and they indicated a record turnout — exactly what the opposition needed to overcome Maduro’s well-greased electoral machine.
Some polls remained open after the deadline to close as Venezuela waited to find out the results of the presidential election.
Opposition leaders were already celebrating, online and outside a few voting centers, what they assured was a landslide victory for González. Their hope was boosted by purported exit polls showing a healthy margin of victory for González. Exit polls are not allowed under Venezuelan law.
“We do not want more people from Venezuela to leave and we will try our best to get them back, and we will welcome them with open arms,” he said.
People cried and chanted “freedom! freedom! ” at the Gonzlez and Machado rallies. as the duo passed by. People walked through military to reach their events, and handed the rosaries to the faithful. Others video-called their relatives who have migrated to let them catch a glimpse of the candidates.
There were speeches attacking opponents and electronic merengue dancing at the rallies. After he made a comment about a “bloodbath” should he lose, he recoiled from it. His son told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that the ruling party would peacefully hand over the presidency if it loses — a rare admission of vulnerability out of step with Maduro campaign’s triumphalist tone.
Both campaigns have distinguished themselves not only for the political movements they represent but also on how they have addressed voters’ hopes and fears.
Venezuela’s President’s Pre-election Maduro Gonzalez: Lines of Joy and Hope in the Last Ten-Year War
Most Venezuelans who migrated over the past 11 years settled in Latin America and the Caribbean. In the last few years, many began looking at the U.S.
Gonzalez told reporters that lines of joy and hope were seen today. We will change hate for love. For progress, we will change poverty. We will change corruption for honesty. We will change goodbyes for reunions.”
After voting at a church-adjacent poll site in an upper-class Caracas neighborhood, González called on the country’s armed forces to respect “the decision of our people.”
In recent years, the economic activity seen in Venezuela’s capital city did nottranslate into higher living standards in the hinterland. They promised to create jobs so that people who are living abroad in Venezuela can return to their families.
The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Source: Venezuelans anxiously await results of an election that could end one-party rule
Change is succeeding in Venezuela, says a Venezuelan woman in the U.S. Its economics in the work-class Petare neighborhood
She said that if González loses, she will ask her relatives living in the U.S. to sponsor her and her son’s application to legally emigrate there. “We can’t take it anymore,” she said.
Elsewhere, Liana Ibarra, a manicurist in greater Caracas, got in line at 3 a.m. Sunday with her water, coffee and cassava snack-laden backpack only to find at least 150 people ahead of her.
“For me, change in Venezuela (is) that there are jobs, that there’s security, there’s medicine in the hospitals, good pay for the teachers, for the doctors,” she said, casting her ballot in the working-class Petare neighborhood of Caracas.
It is not a grim picture. Elsewhere — in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and the United States — democracy is succeeding. It is being tested as the opposition to pluralism grows, and social unrest and dissatisfaction with the government spread, because of stark inequality and institutional instability.