Twenty days of a dizzying electoral campaign have concluded this Thursday in Caracas. Nicolás Maduro, the candidate-president, closed with what his team announced as “a takeover of the capital,” a mobilization that ended up concentrating in the historic center of the city after a prior event in Zulia, the second most important state electorally. The opposition Edmundo González Urrutia, for his part, concluded with an event on an avenue in eastern Caracas, in the Las Mercedes neighborhood, attracting onlookers who parked on the shoulders of the highways to watch the mobilization from a distance. Both candidates dedicated their final words to potential last-minute supporters.
The two men will face off in the presidential elections this Sunday, July 28, on a ballot where the president’s face appears thirteen times along with seven other men who have not managed to surpass 1% of voting intention and a nearly invisible campaign. González, an unknown diplomat until three months ago, now leads the polls with about a 25-point gap over the president, according to the average of surveys.
Maduro spoke to the disenchanted Chavistas, who are undecided about voting, with what has been the most conciliatory message throughout the campaign. “What matters here is to unite. For independence, for love, for harmony and inclusion. To unite all Venezuelans,” he said from Avenida Bolívar in Caracas. Among words of concord, he once again scolded the militants in the audience who were blocking the cameras focusing on him with banners, live on air. “To all those who were opponents: welcome, come with us to build the homeland. National unity,” he continued. By noon, he had already broadcast on television, on national television and radio, a video in which Maduro explained the details of Las 7T, his Government plan for the coming years, and asked Venezuelans to vote for him.
The official command installed stages with sound throughout the city where campaign songs played nonstop. Some parts were deserted, as most supporters concentrated in four points in central Caracas. A caravan of thousands of motorcyclists halted traffic for several minutes on the main highway heading to the event with Maduro. By bus, Chavismo mobilized supporters from the interior of the country, as is usual for gatherings in Caracas. The event ended, as all campaign events did, with choreography and the candidate’s insistence that only his continued hold on power guarantees peace in the country. “Sunday determines the next 50 years of peace for Venezuela,” he said. He also assured that the day after the elections he would sign a decree to initiate a new national dialogue in the country.
Candidate Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the leader who has gathered the desire for change in the country, met with representatives of the parties in the Unitary Platform to sign an agreement outlining what they called a “government of democratic transformation.” What are the guidelines for the Government that González aspires to form? Freedom, political unity, consensus on sensitive issues, civility, rule of law, reconciliation, and a sense of urgency.
The diplomat, who assumed the candidacy after Machado’s disqualification, published a message directed at the Chavista base that is resistant to him. “We do not come to persecute anyone, nor will we throw anyone out of their jobs,” he said. “The vote is secret, nobody will know for whom you voted,” he added, referring to repeated reports of maneuvers by the Chavista machinery to coerce voters under threats of withdrawing benefits. “On Monday the 29th, we will be able to say that the reconciliation of Venezuelans has arrived.”
Polls have shown a wide advantage for González in the final stretch, who could end the Bolivarian revolution after 25 years in power. The heir of Chavismo arrives at this contest with his worst approval ratings, although the official campaign command claims to have its own numbers that say otherwise. In three days, elections will occur that have already marked a milestone in the prolonged political crisis of Venezuela and will define the future of a nation that lost a quarter of its population to migration in less than a decade and shrank its oil-based economy to a third of what it once was.
This Friday, the installation of polling stations in voting centers begins, where the military is already deployed. The election in the second half that was established by the Barbados Agreement is hours away from occurring under conditions different from those signed and with several cracks in transparency guarantees, such as reduced international observation, an advantage in the use of public resources for the official campaign, prior arrests of political leaders, persecution of activists, and attacks and blockades on media outlets. Still, a massive willingness to go vote is the clearest aspect of the landscape. Starting tomorrow, the 72 hours of greatest uncertainty in Venezuela in recent years will commence.
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