Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez (right) with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado in a presidential election campaign rally in Caracas | Photos: REUTERS
By Anatoly KurmanaevFrances Robles & Julie Turkewitz
They arrived in the dark and had been queuing long before dawn to participate in Venezuela’s presidential election, an existential moment for the socialist movement that has ruled the oil-rich country for 25 years.
The country’s ruling party has done everything it can to swing the outcome in its favor. And as voting began on Sunday, there were already signs of trouble. At the Liceo Andrés Bello, a polling station in the capital, Caracas, the crowd finally broke out in a chant — “We want to vote!” Over the course of a generation, Chavismo, as the country’s socialist movement is known, has destroyed the country’s democracy and presided over an extraordinary economic contraction not seen outside of the war.
The elections, held on the birthday of the movement’s founder, Hugo Chávez, will pit Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, against the previously unknown Edmundo González, a former diplomat.
But González is effectively a surrogate candidate for María Corina Machado, a hard-working former lawmaker who has emerged as the country’s newest opposition leader, mobilizing behind a promise to restore democracy and bring Venezuelans home. When Maduro’s government banned Machado from running, her coalition managed to get González on the ballot. The outcome of the election is anyone’s guess, and the entire nation is on edge Maduro has a long history of rigging elections to his advantage, and even fabricating election results.
Polls and dozens of interviews across the country show widespread enthusiasm for González. Campaign events organized by Machado have taken on the feel of mass pilgrimages, with supporters filling street after street and crying into her arms as she marches through the city, begging her for radical change. If González wins and takes office, he is likely to face enormous challenges.
First print: Jul 28, 2024 | 11:29 PM IST