Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is vying for a third term in Sunday’s presidential election after being in power for more than a decade. But weakened by economic crisis and a deteriorating security situation, Hugo Chavez's chosen successor is trailing in polls against opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who is looking to open a new chapter in Venezuela’s history.
A quarter-century after Hugo Chavez came to power, his hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, is looking to secure a third term. But a decade of economic crisis that has plunged the country into poverty – and fuelled the exodus of several million Venezuelans – is proving a difficult legacy to overcome, and Venezuela may be on the cusp of rejecting decades of state-centric Chavismo policies.
Opposition challenger Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a former ambassador to Argentina and Algeria, is generating real enthusiasm, considering that his candidacy was somewhat improvised. Urrutia replaced opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ballot after Maduro’s Supreme Court controversially invalidated her candidacy.
The soft-spoken grandfather is now leading in polls, and may be the opposition’s best hope yet of unseating Maduro.
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Maduro, for his part, has toughened his tone in the run-up to the vote, claiming that a victory for the opposition could plunge the country into “a fratricidal civil war provoked by fascists” and warning of a “bloodbath”.
To get a sense of what is at stake in the election and the chances for change, FRANCE 24 spoke with Fabrice Andréani, a Venezuela expert and doctoral student at Université Lumière Lyon 2, as well as co-author of a study on Venezuelan state violence.
What are the chances for an opposition victory, given that it seems to be doing well?
At this stage there seems to be a real possibility that the opposition will win, driven largely by the popularity of Maria Corina Machado. Despite the government's attempts to prevent her from campaigning, she managed to crisscross the country to support her replacement candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, and sparked real enthusiasm – comparable to that surrounding Chavez before his first election in 1998.
We must remain cautious, however, because Maduro retains control over elections. After the opposition victory in the 2015 legislative vote, the president continued to manipulate the justice system – by deciding which parties can run but also by delaying or bringing forward elections. For now, the opposition is in a position of strength, but a last-minute move that might shift the current dynamic cannot be ruled out.
Is Maduro at risk of defeat due to the past decade’s economic crises?
Maduro's rhetoric – in which he paints himself as protector of the people and national interests in the face of a "radical" right led by foreigners – is definitely languishing. The country suffered from the 2014 fall in oil prices, then from the embargo imposed by the United States. But the economic crisis is primarily the result of a lack of government investment in this crucial sector, which represented 80 percent of foreign exchange and 30 percent of GDP. Over the past decade, production has collapsed, falling from 2.5 million barrels of crude per day to less than 500,000 at the height of the crisis, before struggling to rise again to 1 million.
At the same time, the illegal economy, and in particular drug trafficking, has replaced the formal economy – with the complicity of the government and the army – and the population has fallen into poverty.
There is also a desire to reboot Venezuelan democracy; the population is well aware of Maduro's control over the political sphere. The president is officially supported by the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and 12 other parties, some of which have simply been bought or are otherwise state-controlled.
While more than 7 million Venezuelans left the country, only 100,000 were able to register to vote – something that again demonstrates an attempt to subvert the popular will.
How might the vote be affected by the security situation, which has deteriorated with the economic collapse?
The situation has rather improved in recent years, but not for the right reasons. The drop in crime and homicide in the capital is partly explained by widespread impoverishment; extortion and kidnapping have become less profitable. Some gangs have capitalised on the massive wave of migration to pivot to more lucrative activities, notably human trafficking.
Today, most homicides are due to the settling of scores or the actions of the police themselves, accounting for more than a third of the total. While he has arguably lost control of the country, Maduro pretends to fight against a lack of security by recruiting and sending poorly trained police officers to working-class neighborhoods, which has led to thousands of extrajudicial executions.
Maduro bolstered the political influence of the army. How might the military establishment view a possible victory by the opposition?
Maduro was a former trade union leader who became Chavez's foreign minister. When he came to power, he lacked credibility in the eyes of the army, unlike Chavez himself or other possible successors who had military backgrounds. So he had to offer assurances by continuing, and even accelerating, the rise of the army in the spheres of power. If the opposition wins this election, Maduro has spoken of the risk of a "bloodbath". This risk does not come from the opposition side but rather from the powers that be. And if they continue to act against the will of the people, they expose themselves to possibly seeing a wave of massive protests that they will then have to silence.
The army seems reluctant to face such a scenario, or at least less so than in the past, for several reasons. In 2014 and even more so in 2017, the government repressed anti-government demonstrations in an unprecedented way, painting students and young people from the working classes as violent putschists. But today, with the exodus continuing, it is women who are most often at the forefront of pro-opposition rallies – including single mothers and the elderly, who are demanding reforms so that their loved ones can come back home. This would make it that much more difficult to justify any repression of a mass popular movement.
The army's wait-and-see stance is also due to its own discontent and internal divisions. Some have seen their privileges diminish due to the economic crisis. Others, particularly the high-ranking officers, have suffered from foreign sanctions – in particular, the freezing of their assets abroad. It should also be noted that the army's support for Maduro has never been total: among the approximately 300 political prisoners in the country, half are military personnel. Everything, therefore, seems to indicate that the military is considering scenarios besides Nicolas Maduro remaining in power.
This article is a translation from the original in French.
