Venezuela’s future is at stake: Voters will decide Sunday whether to re-elect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11 years in office have been marked by crisis, or force the opposition to follow through on promises to reverse ruling policies that have caused the economy to collapse and forced millions to flee the country.
Historically divided opposition parties have coalesced behind a single candidate, posing Venezuela’s toughest presidential challenge in decades.
Mr Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who leads a resurgent opposition party, along with eight other candidates. Supporters of Mr Maduro and Mr Gonzalez held large demonstrations in the capital, Caracas, on Thursday to mark the end of the official electoral season.
Here’s why elections matter to the world:
The impact of migration
The election will affect migration flows regardless of who wins. Instability in Venezuela over the past decade has forced more than 7.7 million people to leave, in what the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has described as the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.
While many Venezuelan immigrants have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, an increasing number are turning to the United States.
A nationwide poll conducted in April by Venezuela-based research firm Delfos found that about a quarter of Venezuelans would consider emigrate if Maduro is re-elected.
An election mural promoting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s third term was painted in Caracas. (AP)
About 47% of respondents said they would stay if the opposition won, but about the same number said they would stay if the economy improved. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The main opposition leader is not running.
The most talked-about name in this race isn’t Maria Corina Machado. The former lawmaker emerged as an opposition star in 2023, filling a void left by the exile of a previous generation of opposition leaders. Her principled attacks on government corruption and mismanagement rallied millions of Venezuelans to vote for her in the opposition’s October primary.
But the Maduro government declared the primary illegal and launched a criminal investigation into some of its organizers. Since then, the government has issued arrest warrants for several of Machado’s supporters and arrested several of his staff, and the country’s Supreme Court has upheld a decision to bar him from running.
But she continued her campaign, holding rallies across the country and turning her ban from running into a symbol of the disenfranchisement and humiliation that many voters have felt for more than a decade.
She supported former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia, who had never held public office, helping to unite a fragmented opposition.
They are campaigning together on promises of economic reforms that would bring back millions of people who fled the country since Mr. Maduro took office in 2013. Mr. Gonzalez began his diplomatic career in the late 1970s as an aide to the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States.
He served in Belgium and El Salvador and as ambassador to Algeria in Caracas, his last posting being as ambassador to Argentina under President Hugo Chavez, beginning in 1999.
Why is the current president struggling?
President Maduro’s popularity has declined due to falling oil prices, corruption and an economic crisis caused by government mismanagement.
Maduro can still count on a group of fervent followers known as Chavistas, including millions of civil servants and others whose businesses and jobs depend on the state, but as the economy worsens, his party’s ability to use social welfare programs to motivate people to vote has weakened.
Maduro is the successor to Hugo Chavez, a popular socialist who expanded Venezuela’s welfare state while at odds with the United States. Chavez, who was stricken with cancer, appointed Maduro as interim president after his death. Maduro took office in March 2013 and narrowly won the presidential election the following month that was sparked by his mentor’s death.
Maduro was re-elected in 2018 in what was widely seen as a sham election. His government banned Venezuela’s most popular opposition parties and politicians from participating in the election, and the opposition called on voters to boycott the election because there was no level playing field.
This authoritarian tendency was part of the logic used by the United States in imposing economic sanctions that crippled the country’s vital oil industry.
Mismanaged oil industry
Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves but production has been declining for years due to government mismanagement and endemic corruption at the state oil company.
In April, the Venezuelan government announced the arrest of Tarek El Aissami, a former ally of President Maduro and powerful oil minister, over an alleged scheme that is believed to have resulted in the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenues.
That same month, the U.S. government reimposed sanctions on Venezuela’s energy sector after President Maduro and his allies used the ruling party’s total control over Venezuelan institutions to undermine an agreement to allow free elections.
These actions included preventing Machado from registering as a presidential candidate and arresting and persecuting members of her team.
The sanctions make it illegal for US companies to do business with the state-run Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) without prior authorization from the US Treasury Department, and the outcome of the election could determine whether the sanctions will remain in place.
An uneven playing field.
Last year, the Maduro regime agreed to work with the U.S.-backed Unity Platform coalition to improve conditions for elections in October 2023 that were thought to be freer and fairer.
The agreement on election terms gave Maduro’s government significant exemptions from U.S. sanctions on the state-run oil, gas and mining sectors.
However, a few days later, authorities deemed the opposition primaries illegal and began issuing warrants to arrest human rights activists, journalists, and opposition members.
A UN-backed commission investigating human rights abuses in Venezuela has reported that the government has intensified its crackdown on critics and opponents ahead of the elections, subjecting them to detention, surveillance, intimidation, smear campaigns and arbitrary criminal prosecution.
The government has also used its control over the media, the country’s fuel supply, the power grid and other infrastructure to curb the influence of Machado Gonzalez’s camp.
The Biden administration earlier this year ended sanctions relief it granted in October in response to escalating measures against opposition forces.
