The Venezuela mobilized, radically divided in two, polarized and on the street today is a thing of the past. In the streets of the Caribbean country, laziness weighs, essentially, in a population that, according to the polls, wants a change but cannot find a leader who responds to its desires.
When Venezuelans go to the polls on November 21 to elect mayors and governors, the image of 2013, the most polarized in recent Venezuelan history, will be far behind.
In that year, Nicolás Maduro won the Presidency from Henrique Capriles by just 220,000 votes and multiple allegations of fraud were unleashed.
The scenes of demonstrations such as those of 2014 and 2017 are also very distant, when the opposition, in its best position since the arrival of Hugo Chávez to power in 1999, filled the streets with protests and swept the Legislative of 2015. Furthermore, those experienced when Juan Guaidó was proclaimed interim president in 2019.
Today, opposition leaders privately acknowledge that, if they make a public call for protest, despite the majority rejection of the Maduro government, only a few faithful will respond to the call.
Three out of four Venezuelans want change
The president of the Datanálisis polling station, Luis Vicente León, explains that, according to his studies, “76% of the population wants a change”, which means that “three-quarters of Venezuelans are opponents of Maduro”.
However, he adds that “the representative actors of both sides” -which are, since 2019, Maduro and Guaidó- are practically tied in terms of popular approval, the president with 14% and the opposition with 16%, which considers “absolutely unusual”.
The situation extends to anti-Chavista leaders, who have shown their inability to capitalize on this rejection, but none of them exceeds 20%, according to the latest survey available to León, prepared last October.
“There is no one who stands out within this process, which is, on the one hand, terribly negative and, on the other hand, a fertile field for the emergence of outsiders,” he says.
In this context, the local and regional elections come to which the opposition attends for the first time since 2017. It does so completely headless, without a great leader to follow -something that seems almost indispensable in Venezuela- and with a society that expect more than what you get.
Who can convince that majority that wants change that they should go to the polls or to the streets? It will not be Guaidó, who came to enjoy support figures that were around 61% in January 2019, although León clarifies that it was a borrowed popularity.
“Guaidó was not popular because (being) Guaidó, in reality almost no one knew who he was, he becomes popular because he generates hope that he can produce a change. It is not a leader, it is a satellite that refers to the expectation that a problem can be solved ”, he says.
How is this silent majority expressed?
They are two-thirds of the country and they do not take to the streets, so will that silent majority that rejects Maduro go to the polls? According to the data collected by León, who warns that “it is very difficult with surveys to project participation”, he estimates that between 35% and 40% of the census will go to vote.
León comments that, so far, the mechanism of expression of that silent majority that is against the Maduro government has been abstention, a strategy that the opposition has launched and that has now turned against the anti-Chavista bloc.
“That makes the government protected because who can be its enemy is the concentration of the vote, unity and participation,” he says.
As if that were not enough, the multiple fractures between the opposition lead people to think that “these idiots are again incapable of understanding the challenge they have,” he adds.
“They abandon them because they feel they are completely inadequate and what we are seeing today happens is that people are divorced from politics. They do not even know who the candidates (for the elections) are and the news searches are economic, infrastructure or vaccines. Politics is absolutely marginal in the minds of Venezuelans, “he concludes.
A divorce in a society that, not long ago, filled the streets, moved through politics and talked about it almost daily. A separation that has passed through disappointment and disenchantment, leading almost 30 million to absolute disinterest, if not outright rejection.
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Ricardo is a renowned author and journalist, known for his exceptional writing on top-news stories. He currently works as a writer at the 247 News Agency, where he is known for his ability to deliver breaking news and insightful analysis on the most pressing issues of the day.
