CARACAS, Venezuela: Venezuela's future is at stake. Voters will decide on Sunday whether to re-elect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11 years in office have been marred by crisis, or give the opposition a chance to make good on a promise to reverse the ruling party's policies that caused economic collapse and forced millions to emigrate.
Historically divided opposition parties have rallied behind a single candidate, giving Venezuela's United Socialist Party its most serious electoral challenge in a presidential election in decades.
Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia, who represents the resurgent opposition, and eight other candidates. Supporters of Maduro and Gonzalez marked the end of the official campaign season on Thursday with massive demonstrations in the capital, Caracas.
Venezuelan opposition star Maria Corina Machado raises her hand to opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (L) in a show of support during a news conference in Caracas on July 25, 2024, ahead of Sunday's presidential election. (AFP)
Here are some reasons why the election matters to the world:
Migration effect
The election will affect migration flows regardless of the winner.
Instability in Venezuela over the past decade has pushed more than 7.7 million people to migrate, in what the UN refugee agency describes as the largest exodus in Latin America's recent history. Most Venezuelan migrants have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but they are increasingly targeting the United States.
A nationwide survey conducted in April by the Venezuela-based research firm Delphos found that about a quarter of the population of Venezuela considered emigrating if Maduro wins again. Of these, about 47 percent said an opposition win would make them stay, but roughly the same amount indicated an improving economy would keep them in their home country. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The main opposition leader is not on the ballot
The most talked about name in the race is not on the ballot: María Corina Machado. The former lawmaker emerged as an opposition star in 2023, filling the void left when a previous generation of opposition leaders fled into exile. Her principled attacks on government corruption and mismanagement led millions of Venezuelans to vote for her in the opposition primary in October.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters as she campaigns in support of former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia in Caracas, Venezuela, July 25, 2024. (REUTERS)
But Maduro's government declared the primary illegal and opened criminal investigations against some of its organizers. Since then, it has issued warrants to several of Machado's supporters and arrested some members of her staff, and the country's highest court upheld a decision to keep her off the ballot.
Still, she continued to campaign, holding demonstrations across the country and turning the ban on her candidacy into a symbol of the disenfranchisement and humiliation many voters have felt for over a decade.
She has thrown her support behind Edmundo González Urrutia, a former ambassador who has never held public office, helping unify a fractious opposition.
They are campaigning together on the promise of economic reforms that will lure back the millions of people who have migrated since Maduro became president in 2013.
González began his diplomatic career as an aide to the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States in the late 1970s. He was posted to Belgium and El Salvador and served as Caracas' ambassador to Algeria. His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during Hugo Chávez's presidency, which began in 1999.
Why is the current president struggling?
Maduro's popularity has declined due to an economic crisis caused by falling oil prices, corruption and government mismanagement.
Maduro can still rely on a cadre of die-hard believers, known as Chavistas, including millions of public servants and others whose business or employment is dependent on the state. But his party's ability to use access to social programs to get people to vote has diminished as the economy has worn thin.
He is the heir to Hugo Chávez, a popular socialist who expanded Venezuela's welfare state while locking horns with the United States.
Chávez was ill with cancer and handpicked Maduro to act as interim president upon his death. He took on the role in March 2013, and the following month narrowly won the presidential election triggered by his mentor's death.
Maduro was re-elected in 2018, in a contest widely considered a sham. His government banned Venezuela's most popular opposition parties and politicians from participating and, in the absence of a level playing field, the opposition called on voters to boycott the election.
The authoritarian bent was part of the logic used by the US to impose economic sanctions that crippled the country's crucial oil industry.
Mismanaged oil industry
Venezuela has the world's largest proven crude oil reserves, but its production has been declining for years, in part due to government mismanagement and widespread corruption in the state-owned oil company.
In April, Venezuela's government announced the arrest of Tareck El Aissami, the once-powerful oil minister and a Maduro ally, over an alleged scheme through which hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue seemingly disappeared.
That same month, the US government reimposed sanctions on Venezuela's energy sector, after Maduro and his allies used the ruling party's total control of Venezuela's institutions to undermine an agreement to allow free elections. Among these actions, they blocked Machado from registering as a presidential candidate and arrested and persecuted members of her team.
The sanctions make it illegal for U.S. companies to do business with state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela SA, better known as PDVSA, without prior authorization from the U.S. Treasury Department. The outcome of the election may determine whether the sanctions remain.
An uneven playing field
A freer and fairer presidential election appeared a possibility last year, when Maduro's government agreed to work with the US-backed Unitary Platform coalition to improve electoral conditions in October 2023. An agreement on election conditions gave Maduro's government broad relief from the US ’s economic sanctions against its state oil, gas and mining sectors.
But days later, authorities labeled the opposition primary illegal and began issuing warrants and arresting human rights defenders, journalists and opposition members.
A UN-backed panel investigating human rights abuses in Venezuela has reported that the government has stepped up repression of critics and opponents ahead of the election, subjecting targets to detention, surveillance, threats, smear campaigns and arbitrary criminal trials.
The government has also used its control over the media, the country's fuel supply, electricity grid and other infrastructure to limit the reach of the Machado-González campaign.
The escalating crackdown on the opposition prompted the Biden administration earlier this year to end the sanctions relief it granted in October.
