Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and Parliament Speaker Diosdado Cabello (L) during the annual congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) on July 31, 2014. (Photo credit: JUAN BARRETO/AFP/Getty Images)
Nicolás Maduro is running in Sunday’s presidential election. If his candidacy wins popular support at the ballot box against the candidate backed by the majority of the opposition, Edmundo González Urrutia, the incumbent president will be re-elected for a second time and will start a third term in 2025. What was your journey to the highest power in Venezuela?
Early in his career, he was a bus driver in the Caracas Metro and a union leader.
Maduro met Hugo Chavez after the 1992 coup, when he campaigned for the then-lieutenant colonel’s release after the coup attempt to overthrow then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez.
In 1999, he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly, the body responsible for drafting a new constitution, finally approved in December of that year and which repealed the Magna Carta of 1961. Between 2005 and 2006 he served as President of the National Assembly.
Between 2006 and 2012, during Chávez’s second term, Maduro was foreign minister. His biggest challenge came in October 2012 when Chávez, after winning the elections of that October, chose him as vice president.
At the end of that year, on December 9, Hugo Chávez announced that he would travel to Havana to continue his cancer treatment. On a national network, the then-president asked his followers to support Maduro if he was unable to assume his new term in January 2013.
The Venezuelan Constitution states that in the event of the death or incapacity of the President, new general, direct and secret elections will be held within the next thirty consecutive days.
That’s why Chavez asked the people to support Maduro in this election.
“If something happens that prevents me from continuing as president, Nicolás Maduro must finish his term,” the head of state said.
“My firm opinion, complete, like the full moon, irreversible, absolute, total, is that in this scenario that will force us to call presidential elections again, you elect Nicolás Maduro as President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I tell you that I ask,” Chavez added, holding a copy of the Venezuelan Constitution in his hand.
When Chávez died on March 5, 2013, Maduro assumed the role of interim president until the National Electoral Council called elections for April 14, 2013.
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