Caracas, Venezuela: Venezuela's future is on the line. Voters will decide on Sunday whether to re-elect President Nicolas Maduro, whose 11-year term has been beset by crisis, or give the opposition a chance to fulfill a promise to undo the ruling party's policies that led to an economic collapse and forced millions to emigrate.
Historically fractured opposition parties have united 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 election season with mass demonstrations in the capital Caracas on Thursday.
Venezuelan opposition star Maria Corina Machado raises the hand of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (L) during a press conference in Caracas, July 25, 2024, ahead of Sunday's presidential election. (AFP)
Here are some reasons why elections are important to the world:
Migration effect
Even if the election is won, it will affect the flow of migration.
Instability in Venezuela over the past decade has pushed more than 7.7 million people to migrate, in what the United Nations refugee agency has described as the largest exodus in Latin America's recent history. Most Venezuelan immigrants have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but they are increasingly looking to the US.
A nationwide poll conducted in April by Delphos, a Venezuela-based research firm, indicated that about a quarter of Venezuelans plan to emigrate if Maduro wins again. Of those, about 47 percent said an opposition win would prompt them to stay, but roughly the same amount indicated an improved economy would keep them in their country. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
The main opposition leader is not on the ballot
The most famous name in the race is not on the ballot: Maria Corina Machado. The former MP emerged as an opposition star in 2023, filling the void left when the previous generation of opposition leaders fled into exile. His principled attacks on government corruption and mismanagement drew millions of Venezuelan opposition voters to vote for him in the October primaries.
Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado greets supporters as she campaigns in support of former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia on July 25, 2024 in Caracas, Venezuela. (REUTERS)
But Maduro's government declared the primary illegal and opened criminal investigations against some of its organizers. Since then, it has issued warrants for many of Machado's supporters and arrested some members of his staff, and the country's Supreme Court upheld a decision to keep him off the ballot.
Still, she continues to campaign, holding nationwide rallies and turning the ban on her candidacy into a symbol of entitlement and humiliation that voters have felt for more than a decade.
She has thrown her support behind Edmundo González Urrutia, a former ambassador who has never held public office, helping unite the opposition.
They are campaigning together on promises of economic reforms that will bring back millions of people who have fled since Maduro became president in 2013.
Gonzalez began his diplomatic career in the late 1970s as an aide to the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States. He was posted in Belgium and El Salvador, and served as Caracas' ambassador to Algeria. His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during the presidency of Hugo Chávez beginning 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 bank on a cadre of hardliners known as Chavistas, millions of public workers and others whose businesses or jobs depend on the state. But as the economy slumps, his party's ability to use access to social programs to get people to vote has diminished.
He is the successor to Hugo Chávez, a populist socialist who expanded Venezuela's welfare state by locking it with the United States.
Chávez, who was suffering from cancer, chose Maduro to serve as interim president after his death. He assumed the role in March 2013, and the following month, he narrowly won the presidential election due to his mentor's death.
Maduro was re-elected in 2018, in a contest that was widely considered rigged. His government banned Venezuela's most popular opposition parties and politicians from participating and, lacking a level playing field, the opposition urged voters to boycott the election.
That authoritarian bent was part of the rationale for US economic sanctions that crippled the country's vital oil industry.
Disorganized oil industry
Venezuela has the world's largest proven crude reserves, but its production has declined over the years due to government mismanagement and widespread corruption in state-owned oil companies.
In April, Venezuela's government announced the arrest of Tarek El Essamy, a once-powerful oil minister and Maduro ally, in an alleged scheme through which hundreds of millions of dollars in oil revenue were apparently lost.
That same month, the US government reimposed sanctions on Venezuela's energy sector, after Maduro and his allies used the ruling party's full control of Venezuelan institutions to undermine an agreement to allow free elections. Among those actions, they prevented Machado from registering as a presidential candidate and arrested and persecuted members of his team.
The sanctions make it illegal for U.S. companies to do business with state-run Petróleos de Venezuela SA, known as PDVSA, without prior permission from the U.S. Treasury Department. The outcome of the election could decide whether those restrictions remain in place.
An uneven playing field
A more free and fair presidential election last year appeared promising when Maduro's government agreed in October 2023 to work with the US-backed Unitary Platform coalition to improve electoral conditions. The deal on election conditions gave Maduro's government massive relief from the US economy. Restrictions on its government oil, gas and mining sectors.
But a few days later, authorities declared 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 elections, targeting detention, surveillance, intimidation, smear campaigns and arbitrary criminal proceedings.
The government has also used control of media outlets, the country's fuel supply, electricity network and other infrastructure to limit the reach of the Machado-González campaign.
The growing crackdown on opposition prompted the Biden administration earlier this year to end the sanctions relief granted in October.
