The Economist: If Venezuela’s elections were fair, she would be the favorite

She promises atotal transformation” from Venezuela. The gigantic and decrepit state oil company, PDVSA, will be privatized, like all public service companies. “We will have open markets. We will have the rule of law… This country will become the energy center of the Americas”, he promises.

Those are the ambitions of María Corina Machado, a 55-year-old former lawmaker who announced on June 23 her candidacy to become the opposition candidate to overthrow Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian president, in next year’s elections. She is the favorite among the 14 contenders to win a primary election in which supporters of opposition parties will vote and which is scheduled for October 22; 57% of likely voters support her, according to Power and Strategya pollster.

Defeat Ripe in general elections it should be easy. Since he took office in 2013, the economy has shrunk by 75%, plunging millions into poverty. Almost a quarter of the population, some seven million people, left Venezuela. But the vote is likely to be unreliable. In 2015 it was the last time that in Venezuela national elections were held with a legitimate result, when the opposition won control of the National Assembly. The Maduro regime stripped the legislature of its powers.

Machado, known for her incendiary style, is on the extreme right of the opposition political spectrum. In an interview* with The Economist in Caracas, he named Margaret Thatcher as the politician he most admires.

Despite the odds stacked against him, he insists that the battle for democracy is not yet lost. Although he has strong reservations about participating in any regime-supervised election, he says that the primaries “could be the catalyst” change. It will be an opportunity for the voters to shout “No” to Ripe and shake up your government by reminding other countries that Venezuelans still want democracy.

Machado He comes into contention with advantages. He once personally confronted Hugo Chávez, who started Venezuela’s economic and democratic decline and appointed Ripe as his successor as president. In 2012, while chavez was in the middle of a nine-hour address to the legislature, she interrupted to denounce how “heist” his expropriation of businesses (including a steel mill owned by his family). Irritated, chavez tried to put the young deputy in her place. “Eagle does not catch flieshe replied, backed by a chorus of taunts from his lackeys.

Machado He had no formal participation in the failed “interim governmentby Juan Guaidó. That should help her now. In 2019, the United States, the European Union, and dozens of other nations recognized Guaidówho was head of the legislature, as legitimate president of Venezuelabut he was never close to achieving power.

The project ended in January this year, when the opposition voted to dissolve the supposed government he presided over. Guaidó He is now in the United States. Machadowho supported US sanctions on the regime Ripe“now has the monopoly of the most radical sector of the opposition“, says Louis Vincent Leona pollster who lives in Caracas.

Sell ​​them

Privatize PDVSA is the core of the policy of Machado and that distinguishes it from its rivals. Once the world’s most profitable major oil company has been brought down by corruption and mismanagement during the governments of chavez and Ripe. But Machado’s outspoken primary rivals doubt that privatization is the answer.

“Oil belongs to the people”, declares Henrique Capriles, a former state governor who has run for president twice and who hopes, like Machado, to be the opposition’s nominee this time. Venezuelans should not assume that “everything public is bad and everything private is good”. Machado disagrees.

Venezuela “it has only known statism and socialism in different colors and ways… This must be dismantled”. Machado she insists that she has a lot in common with all Venezuelans, even though she is the daughter of an industrialist. “There are thousands of us who have been robbed by the regimehe says in the impeccable English he learned at a boarding school in Massachusetts. His three children live abroad, but the regime has prevented Machado from leaving the country since 2014. Many other families have been divided by the exodus in recent years. “We all want our families to be together again.“, she says.

The 14 opposition candidates have yet to reach an agreement on how the primaries will work. On June 16, the main parties decided to organize the logistics themselves instead of relying on the National Electoral Council, which is controlled by the regime. This means that the opposition will have to pay for the elections and even for the installation of polling stations throughout the country.

In a normal election, Machado would be the first favorite to defeat a president who has brought disaster to his country. But Maduro, described by a Caracas-based diplomat who saw him recently as “definitely jovial”, has given no sign that he will allow himself to be fired. Yeah Machado is your opponent, your reluctance will deepen. She has repeatedly called for the dictator and his entourage to stand trial. One time, she recounts, she told him to her face that she doesn’t want him to die because she would be better off.”live and face justice”.

It is likely that Ripe stay in power for another decade, he estimates Vincent Leon. That could change if he allows a fair election in the belief that he is more popular than he really is. But there is a small chance of that.

*Last Friday, the Comptroller General of Venezuela disqualified former deputy María Corina Machado for 15 years from running for popularly elected positions, when she appeared as a favorite to be the opposition candidate for the 2024 presidential elections, according to the surveys.