Analysis | Why are Venezuela’s upcoming presidential elections different from previous ones?
Photo: Federico Parra/AFP/AFP via Getty Images
Venezuela is preparing for a presidential election scheduled for July 28, in which Chavismo appears closer than at any time in its 25 years in power to losing power, according to opinion polls by ORC Consultants, after a long-running economic and political crisis. Faced with an opposition that arrives largely united on voting day.
The collapse of GDP in the past decade and the departure of more than 7.7 million Venezuelans from the country may not be enough to explain the circumstances that framed the electoral campaign, because by the time of the 2018 elections, the recession had been ongoing for several years and the migration movement was unfolding.
If in 2018 the Venezuelan Supreme Court disqualified the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition, which then brought together a large part of the opposition, considering that its participation contravened the ban on dual radicalization, this time it did not allow the winner of the primary, María Corina Machado, to run due to her disqualification from holding elected office issued by the Comptroller General of the Republic. Then her replacement, Corina Jores, was unable to register.
“The opposition has never been so close to winning,” Benigno Alarcon, director of the Center for Political and Governmental Studies at Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), told CNN, referring to a likely election victory for candidate Edmundo González, a leader at the ballot box.
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