Maduro in three stages: Venezuela’s elections put his economic recipe to the test

From being a secondary character with Hugo Chavez in charge of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro He went on to rule the country, in his own words, with an iron fist. His mandate in the last decade, which has included a period of relaxation of the socialist economic recipe, will be subjected to a key test on Sunday for revalidation at the polls in an election in which he faces his main electoral challenge since he took power in 2013.

He President Maduro is seeking re-election for a third six-year term, while experts and observers have said the opposition has a real chance of winning this time.

It presents itself in the campaign as the “only guarantee of stability and peace for Venezuela“and has promised seven transformations that include a new national economic model.

After eleven years in power, during which he had to overcome insurrections by his opponents and protests by the population, as well as navigate trade sanctions, international isolation, uprisings within the ranks of the government and the deterioration of the national economy, Ripe He is headed by the candidacy of an opposition bloc that nurtures among its own desires for change and hopes for a better future for Venezuela.

For the first time in his political career, the 61-year-old former Metro union member will compete at the polls without the support of popularity that he inherited from Chávez (1999-2013) after his death and that propelled him in the April 2013 election. Nor with the advantage he had in the disputed 2018 elections, when he competed practically alone, after the opposition coalition refused to participate alleging the lack of guarantees.

Despite the government’s control over public powers, including the electoral one, and the support of the military high command, analysts agree that Ripe It doesn’t seem like he has it all together this time.

The management of Ripe The country has begun to suffer more severely from the impact of a seven-year recession, which has reduced the economy by a quarter, the low production of the oil industry, which is the main source of foreign currency for the country, and the sanctions maintained by the United States. Although these have been relaxed, they continue to impact oil sales and, therefore, national income.

This evolution in popularity has been reflected, in parallel, in a reorientation of his decisions and his role as leader.

From loyal collaborator to political heir of Chavez

Until the night of December 8, 2012, when Chavez He surprised the country by appearing before television cameras for the last time three months before he died alongside Ripeno one expected that he would name his loyal collaborator since the failed coup in 1992 as his political heir.

In his televised address, the late president identified the then 50-year-old vice president as a “A revolutionary through and through, with great experience despite his youth, great dedication to work, great capacity for leading groups.”.

Amid the uncertainty generated by the death of Chávez on March 5, 2013, Maduro assumed the leadership of a country shaken by the disappearance of its fundamental leader.

At that time, few believed that the former union leader and subway driver, who had no university studies and who only had six years of experience as a deputy and president of Congress, six years in charge of the Foreign Ministry and a couple of months in the Vice Presidency, could ensure the survival of Chavez’s political project.

Ripe He was identified by his adversaries as a person with little knowledge and they made fun of him by calling him “a donkey”, recalling the episode in which he claimed that Chávez appeared to him in the form of a bird after his death.

But the leftist politician faced his first real test in April 2013 when he ran against Capriles in an election that he narrowly won. In those first years of his mandate, Maduro focused on preserving the legacy of the late leader, as well as his policies of controls.

Navigating through crises with a firm hand

Despite his electoral victory His opponents gave him no respite. In 2014, the most radical opposition, which Machado already included, called for street protests in the Venezuelan capital and other cities that left 43 dead and dozens of arrests. Among them, opposition leader Leopoldo López was detained for almost five years.

A year after these protests, the opposition won the majority of seats in the Chamber of Deputies and snatched control of Congress from the ruling party, which it had held for 16 years.

The opposition’s victory unleashed strong tensions between the legislature, the executive and the Supreme Court of Justice —close to the government— that escalated until 2017. That year, Maduro managed to install an official Constituent Assembly to neutralize Congress and dismiss the attorney general, who for years was a faithful ally of Chávez, but confronted the president, accusing him of violating the constitutional order and ignoring the State model.

These events were followed by four months of street protests between April and July 2017, which were repressed by security and military forces, leaving more than a hundred dead, thousands injured and several dozen arrested throughout the country.

For these events, in February 2018 the International Criminal Court opened a preliminary examination of Venezuela, and in September of that year six countries in the region asked that judicial body to investigate possible crimes against humanity, in a case that has not yet been resolved.

In that hectic stage, Venezuela The country also suffered an economic recession and rampant inflation that was accompanied by severe food shortages and other basic products that triggered a social crisis and mass migration never seen before in Venezuela.

Questioned re-election without opposition and economic turnaround

Amid questions from the international community and rejection from the opposition, a presidential election was called in October 2018 in which Ripe He ran practically alone and was re-elected with six million votes.

More than twenty countries, including the United States, questioned the elections and Maduro had to face international isolation from that moment on.

A year later, the political crisis was rekindled when opposition deputy Juan Guaidó, a member of the Voluntad Popular party created by Leopoldo López, assumed the leadership of Congress and declared himself interim president of Venezuela, with the support of several European countries and the United States, which imposed harsh sanctions on Maduro’s government to pressure him to leave office.

In 2019, there were also street protests and a failed military uprising on April 30 backed by López, who later took refuge in the Spanish Embassy and then fled the country.

The ruling party regained control of Congress in the December 2020 parliamentary elections, which took place amid an opposition boycott.

Despite regaining political control, Maduro’s problems did not end. In 2020, the economic crisis worsened due to the effects of sanctions and the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The oil-producing country began to face severe gasoline shortage problems for the first time in its history, which deepened the paralysis of the already weakened Venezuelan productive apparatus.

According to estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Venezuelan economy registered an accumulated contraction of 75% of the Gross Domestic Product between 2013 and 2021.

Maduro then began to implement a series of economic measures starting in 2021, further removed from Chávez’s policies despite continuing to identify itself as a socialist government, such as the elimination of price and exchange controls, the flexibility of imports, a de facto dollarization of the domestic economy, as well as restrictions on public spending and private debt. That year, Venezuela managed to emerge from the hyperinflationary cycle it had faced for four years.

For David Smilde, a professor at Tulane University in the United States who specializes in the study of Venezuela, Maduro promoted these economic changes “out of obligation,” in response to the difficulties that arose from the sanctions imposed by Washington.These changes were allowed to happen as if for survival.“, he noted.

These measures began to be reflected in the results and allowed inflation to be kept under control, which in the first half of this year reached an accumulated 8.9%. In comparison, last year in the same period, it registered 108%.

The changes in economic policy were accompanied by the dialogues that the government initiated with the opposition and the United States, which gradually began to relax some oil sanctions. Similarly, several European countries also resumed their relations with Venezuela.