Will President Nicolas Maduro seek re-election in Venezuela? When will the elections take place? Will opposition candidate María Corina Machado be a candidate?
Venezuelan politics is full of questions at the start of the 2024 elections.
While the Chavista leader maintains the mystery and does not confirm whether he will be a candidate – although his closest friends and his staunchest enemies take it almost for granted – the year begins with uncertainty and a turbulent political climate.
Here are some clues to what to expect in the coming months.
When are the elections?
That's one of the unanswered questions. They are scheduled for the second half of the year, but the electoral authority has not yet set a date.
The government and the opposition agreed in Norwegian-mediated negotiations that the one-round presidential elections will be held in the second half of 2024, with observation from the European Union and other international actors.
Washington, a protagonist in this process, then lifted its sanctions on Venezuela's oil, gas and gold for six months, although it conditioned it to open spaces for transparent elections.
Maduro, who has ruled Venezuela since 2013, was re-elected in 2018 for a second six-year term in an election unknown to more than 60 countries, including the United States, amid allegations of fraud.
"The government was very weakened by the international isolation," political analyst Ricardo Rios told AFP. "They have managed to overcome the lack of recognition and need to maintain a more or less neat image."
Will Maduro be a candidate?
The Venezuelan president said it was "premature" to confirm whether he will seek re-election.
"God only knows... Not Diosdado, God," Maduro told the Telesur channel, in a play on words with the name of former Vice President Diosdado Cabello, number two in the ruling party. "Let's hope that the electoral scenarios are defined. We will make the best decision," he promised.
Cabello has said Maduro will be the candidate of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in 2024, the year in which Chavismo celebrates 25 years in power.
The comment "was a political prank by Maduro," said Rios, who sees in the president "a token of union" within the "very divided" ruling party and low in popularity.
Nicolás Maduro's government insists on territorial clash with Guyana over the Essequibo region. Photo: EFE
"He has been campaigning for more than a year, the mere possibility that he is not the candidate would be evidence of a tremendous crisis," said political scientist Luis Salamanca.
Maduro, in fact, was the protagonist of the campaign for a referendum that claims Venezuelan sovereignty over the oil-rich Essequibo territory controlled by Guyana, and which analysts saw as a thermometer of mobilization. Ten million voters participated in the referendum according to official figures, questioned by the opposition and experts due to the absence of queues at the polling stations.
Will María Corina Machado be able to run?
Opposition leader Machado swept the primaries of the main opposition platform, with more than two million votes (more than 90%), but is disqualified from holding public office for 15 years.
The former parliamentarian challenged that sanction before the supreme court as part of a mechanism created under pressure from Washington within the dialogue process. The court has no time to decide, which puts his candidacy at risk.
"If María Corina Machado is allowed to legally participate in the elections, there is no doubt that she will sweep the elections," Salamanca said. "But I have a lot of doubts, I see a tendency of the regime to maintain itself and not allow a defiant candidacy." It would be, therefore, the end of Chavismo.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado does not know if she will be allowed to run in the elections in Venezuela. Photo: EFE
The opposition comes into the elections weakened by years of divisions, so it is possible that leaders far from the traditional leadership – many of them branded as collaborators – will enter the fray.
The economic situation
Maduro often congratulates himself on Venezuela's "economic recovery," when the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) estimated growth of 4.5% in 2023. Other private firms, however, revised their projections and are now talking about stagnation.
The country went through eight years of recession in which its GDP plummeted 80% due to the collapse of its oil industry. But it rebounded in 2022 after the lifting of tight economic controls, leading to informal dollarization and reducing inflation, although it remains among the highest in the world.
The easing of sanctions and the return of oil majors could have a positive impact.
"We are expecting an expansion of the economy of 9.7%" in 2024, Asdrubal Oliveros, director of the financial firm Ecoanalítica, said in a podcast. "It's going to be felt in the oil sector, but also in commercial activity."
Although he also warned that it will be a year of great uncertainty, precisely because of the elections.
Source: AFP
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