A Hard Fought Election In Venezuela

The Three-legged Stool VENEZUELA Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is running for reelection for a third term on July 28. His strategy includes appearing on the ballot 13 times as the endorsed candidate of different political parties. His main rival, Edmundo González Urrutia, meanwhile, appears only three times. These maneuvers are only the tip of the iceberg regarding Maduro’s election meddling, reported the New York Times. His government has also rejected candidates, arrested opposition organizers, developed confusing ballots to stymie challengers, and barred millions of expatriate Venezuelans critical of Maduro’s regime from voting. Venezuelan authorities, for example, recently arrested opposition leader María Corina Machado’s security chief on charges of violence against women, the Associated Press wrote. Machado said the allegations were bogus but illustrated the challenges she and her allies face. Machado won an informal primary to face Maduro in the election but officials banned her from running. Now she is campaigning for her hand-picked candidate, the former diplomat González. Despite his advantages, polls show that Maduro is 20 points behind González, reported Reuters, mostly because the autocratic socialist president’s handling of the economy has been atrocious. The South American country’s gross domestic product has shrunk by a third under Maduro and his predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, a left-wing hero who lifted millions of Venezuelans out of poverty but set the stage for economic sclerosis and political corruption, explained the Council on Foreign Relations. Today, more than 80 percent of the country’s population lives in poverty. The health system is crumbling. The oil industry, which is vital to its prosperity, is falling apart, too. Around 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country in search of jobs and liberty, noted the United Nations Refugee Agency. These expatriates are often among Maduro’s most outspoken critics. The Christian Science Monitor, for instance, interviewed María de los Ángeles León Núñez, who organized anti-Maduro activities ahead of the forthcoming vote for more than 100,000 of her compatriots who migrated to Mexico in recent years. Maduro, meanwhile, shows little signs of going down nicely. He and his ruling party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, must win the election if voters do not want Venezuela to fall into “a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war,” he said at a campaign rally in the capital of Caracas recently, CNN reported. Financial markets are betting that González has at least a chance to win in an upset victory, Bloomberg wrote, though nobody doubts that the challenger faces an uphill battle against formidable odds. The pressure for change is building steadily, the newswire added, even as the world has seen this in Venezuela before.