Venezuelan opposition holds primaries to find rival for Maduro in 2024 election

The Venezuelan opposition is looking for a rival for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Twenty-one million Venezuelans in the country and abroad will vote on Sunday for the candidate they wish to compete against Maduro at next year’s presidential elections. Ten candidates are in the running, but the conservative politician María Corina Machado is the favorite to win.

Sunday’s primaries are being held after the Maduro government and the opposition met last week in Barbados and reached an agreement to respect the constitutional calendar. Under this deal, presidential elections will be held in the second half of 2024. A day after the agreement was struck, the United States eased sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas sector gas. This measure will be in place for the next six months, and will only be extended if Maduro continues taking steps to restore democracy and allows an opposition candidate to fairly challenge him at the polls.

The road to the primaries has been long and bumpy. The Venezuelan government has not made it easier for the opposition to hold the vote, maintaining an ambiguous attitude with the National Electoral Council (CNE), which only offered its help at the last minute. In the end, the candidates themselves, supported by their parties and civil society, took charge of the logistics of the vote. Voting will take place in 3,010 centers and 5,134 voting stations in Venezuela, and in 28 countries, including Germany, Colombia, Mexico, Ireland, Norway, Spain and the United States. It is a huge effort that faces many difficulties. Venezuelans in the country who want to participate must find their voting center on a website that they can only access by using a VPN, since internet service providers have blocked access to the site.

Venezuela’s opposition has always struggled to stay united against Chavismo, the political movement started by deceased former president Hugo Chávez. And Sunday’s primary vote has been no exception. One of the country’s most renowned opposition leaders, Henrique Capriles, withdrew from the race two weeks ago, alleging that he could not run for president if he had been disqualified. Another party, Fuerza Vecinal (Neighborhood Force), withdrew its support and called for the vote to be cancelled. Other leaders, such as Manuel Rosales, the governor of the state of Zulia, have announced that they will run outside of the primary process. In the 20 years, the Venezuelan government has been in power — first with Hugo Chávez and then with Maduro — it has benefitted from the ongoing division in the opposition.

Machado — the front-runner in the primary race — was barred from holding public office a few months ago, and it is not clear what will happen if she wins Sunday’s vote. The Barbados agreement states that “all candidates and political parties” should be allowed to take part in the 2024 election, but only as long as they “meet the requisites established by law.” Analysts believe that Chavismo not allow Machado to face Maduro at next year’s election, particularly given the president’s low approval ratings and the fact that international observers will be observing the 2024 vote.

Barinas' strategy

A section of the opposition believes the best way to approach the presidential election is to apply the strategy used in Barinas, Chávez’s home state, where the opposition won the regional elections by surprise in 2021. The election was won by Freddy Superlano, who was retroactively disqualified. The Superior Court of Justice ordered the elections to be repeated. The loss was very symbolic, as the Chavismo candidate was Jorge Arreaza, Chávez’s former son-in-law.

After Superlano was barred from public office, the opposition presented a number of candidates from his circle, and one by one they were disqualified by the CNE — a tactic the government uses to get rid of competitors. In the end, one candidate was accepted: Sergio Garrido. He faced Arreaza in January 2022, and he won. The victory showed that what mattered more than the name on the ballot was for the opposition to be united.

Some in the opposition believe this strategy — presenting names until Chavismo is forced to accept one — could be successful. But it is unclear whether Machado will step aside if she is not allowed to run for president, or if she will block a possible replacement. If she wins the primary but is barred from running, it is not clear whether the second-place candidate in the race will replace her.

What’s more, organizers of the primary have faced many setbacks when setting up voting centers. Some spots are being relocated due to pressure from the government on the institutions that have provided them. It is also expected to be a rainy day, so voting points that are on the street and do not have cover could be in danger. And there are also problems with media coverage. The National Press Union reported that journalists and radio media directors have been pressured to suspend their limited coverage of the primary vote starting Friday night. In any case, in the latest polls carried out by Delphos a week ago, 66.7% of the population said they were willing to attend the elections on Sunday, although of that group only 20% said they had a high or very high probability of doing so.

The primaries come at a time when Venezuela is opening up to the world. The U.S. reached out to Maduro with the partial lifting of sanctions that will undoubtedly help improve the battered local economy. At the same time, the Venezuelan president said that there would be no free elections in 2024 if the country was not freed from sanctions. Now that Washington has taken a first step, it is Maduro’s turn to make a move. Hours after the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) authorized transactions related to oil and gas sector operations, Maduro released five political prisoners, including journalist Roland Carreño, who had been imprisoned for three years. The rapprochement between the two countries tacitly implies that Chavismo respect the primaries and respect the results of next year’s presidential elections.

In the race against Maduro, the opposition needs a candidate backed by all. It would be the first time in 10 years that the opposition unites together to defeat Chavismo. It remains to be seen whether the opposition will compete against on Maduro on equal terms and with guarantees — but at least, they would have presented a united front and taken part in the election. The strategy of not participating in the vote so as to not play into the hands of Chavismo — which happened in the 2020 parliamentary elections — is no longer an option.

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