Unequal competition in Venezuela

The registration of presidential candidacies in Venezuela on Monday anticipated the opaque climate of an electoral process that risks repeating the pattern of previous ones and ending in an unequal competition on July 28. Chavismo demonstrated that it maintains absolute control of the institutions and their rules of the game. After the disqualification of María Corina Machado, the best-positioned rival, the opposition could not even register the candidate named as a substitute, the academic Corina Yoris. The reason was an apparent computer failure on the National Electoral Council (CNE) form, which rejected her credentials without further explanation. However, an extension of the deadline allowed the nomination of a low-profile candidate accepted by the Unitary Platform, the alliance that closed ranks with Machado.

Criticism of the registration procedure has been practically unanimous. The White House, the European Union, but also progressive Latin American governments, such as the Colombian government of Gustavo Petro or the Brazilian government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, showed concern about the lack of guarantees. Nicolás Maduro rejected the accusations and called them “interference,” although in the end the Chavista authorities admitted the ballot of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), predecessor of the Unitary Platform. Its candidate is the diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, a provisional figure who will have the task of saving the position for a more powerful candidate. The law allows a candidate to be replaced up to 10 days before the vote.

González Urrutia is joined, among the candidates who managed to register, by two other veteran anti-Chavista politicians: Enrique Márquez, a social democratic leader who commands a certain consensus in the coalition led by Machado, and the governor of the State of Zulia, Manuel Rosales, who in the He is currently the main opposition public official. Nine other applicants also presented their credentials, including figures close to the Government and opponents of minority parties.

Maduro, whom all polls place behind Machado, is trying to eliminate rivals from the race with the possibility of tarnishing his victory. On this occasion, compared to the 2018 event, the premises of the elections seemed different. Hugo Chávez's successor negotiated on both sides with the United States and the opposition. In 2023, Washington relaxed some sanctions on oil and even agreed to return to Caracas Alex Saab, prosecuted in Florida as an alleged front man for Maduro. His number two, the president of the National Assembly Jorge Rodríguez, staged an agreement with the anti-Chavista forces in Barbados. Everything was left in borage water.

In January there was a twist in the script. The Government denounced five alleged plans to assassinate the president and there were dozens of arrests. Maduro has precedents that support the theory of assassination, such as the crazy landing of mercenaries and former soldiers on two beaches near Caracas in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. But that fear has prevailed and has led Chavismo to entrench itself again.

There are almost four months left until the elections and basic aspects such as the presence of independent observers remain to be defined. What the registration of candidates has prefigured is an arduous battle for basic electoral rights. A worrying precedent that would make the July elections lose legitimacy.