Venezuelan government still deciding whether to allow the candidacy of opposition leader María Corina Machado

For a month now, the Venezuelan government and the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) have had the ball in their court. The country’s prolonged political crisis — in which the international community has mediated, pushing for elections with guarantees — is, once again, facing a decisive year. The crisis will continue for as long as President Nicolás Maduro allows it to last.

The final steps in the negotiations between the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the United States — within the framework of the agreements reached between the Maduro government and the Venezuelan opposition in Barbados — led opposition leader María Corina Machado to present an appeal before the judiciary, asking that her political ban be lifted. She argues that it was handed down without legal basis.

In recent years, the Chavista government — first led by Hugo Chávez from 1999 until his death in 2013, when he was succeeded by Maduro — has blocked all competition in elections by using its judicial arm. On December 15, 2023, the deadline to process appeals for candidate disqualifications expired. That day, Machado went to the Supreme Court. The Christmas break, the election of new justices and a backlog of cases have all served to allow the TSJ to delay its response. This has kept a large portion of the country’s population on edge. Meanwhile, Machado’s lawyers continue to be denied access to her file.

Last week, the new president of the highest judicial body in Venezuela — Caryslia Rodríguez — was appointed. The judge isn’t only a member of the PSUV and a former lawyer for the party, she’s also close to First Lady Cilia Flores. On top of that, she presides over the Electoral Tribunal, which ordered the suspension of the opposition primaries in which Machado was elected with 92% of the votes (they were organized independently). In the speech she gave following her appointment to the post, the new president of the TSJ urged her fellow judges to “achieve great victories, as required by this stellar moment in the country’s history.”

Against this backdrop, the Chavista apparatus faces a big dilemma. The negotiations with the opposition proposed a transaction: the granting of democratic guarantees by the government in exchange for the relaxation of sanctions on Venezuela, to expand Caracas’s room for financial maneuver. In the middle of that crossroads is Machado, a former deputy of the National Assembly. The Venezuelan crisis has entered a quagmire with two extreme scenarios. The first is to give the green light to her candidacy, fulfilling what was pledged in the Barbados agreements. And the second is to block her way again, with the costs that this implies in the dialogue that the Maduro government has established with the United States.

The decision should be announced in the coming weeks. “It’s expected that the decision will be made within the month of January, since the deadline hasn’t expired. But the delays show a certain dilemma for the government. [It’s not so easy to] terminate the negotiation, as, evidently, [Maduro’s government] is interested in getting everything it can out of the [the agreements with the United States],” says Benigno Alarcón, director of the Center for Political Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas.

According to the Barbados agreements, the presidential elections should be held in the second-half of this year. A schedule is yet to be established, which would facilitate the registration of new voters, or allow applications to have electoral observers. “We demand [a fixed] date for the presidential elections, in which we’ll all be with our candidate, María Corina Machado, who represents the change that all Venezuelans want,” reads a statement that was published earlier this week by the Unitary Platform, which brings together the largest coalition of opposition parties in the country.

Like the TSJ, the government continues to delay its response. How competitive the 2024 elections will be — if they even occur — is a matter that has yet to be defined. “The election will be as open as possible… and as closed as the government requires,” Alarcón notes. “[The Chavista government] is now in a very disadvantageous situation. If it says no to Machado’s participation, it would have to face an election that the international community won’t recognize. [Maduro] would maintain power, but he wouldn’t regain legitimacy. So, what he can do is play with the timing of the election. If he says that she can participate, he’s at risk of losing power, because the country demands a change.” In the most recent opinion polls, at the end of 2023, 85% of Venezuelans demanded a new government, even though about 40% still declare their affiliation with the movement established by Hugo Chávez.

Between the two extreme scenarios, there’s also an intermediate point. It consists of achieving certain conditions, such as electoral observation, or complying with recommendations given by the European Union during the opposition’s participation in the 2021 regional and local elections. At the same time, the political ban on Machado forces the opposition to think about a substitute candidate, thus fueling division and internal competition in the opposition ranks.

U.S. politics — given the 2024 presidential elections — is also a key factor. In April of this year – six months after several licenses were granted to foreign corporations operating in Venezuela – the policy of easing sanctions is set to be reviewed again. So far, a group of American and European companies have been making inroads with the Maduro government to resume projects in collaboration with PDVSA, the state-owned oil company. But the migration of millions of Venezuelans — fleeing the economic and political crisis — has also become a topic of discussion between Caracas and Washington. Along with energy licenses being granted and prisoner exchanges taking place, deportation flights for undocumented Venezuelans from the United States have also accelerated.

Even so, amidst uncertainty, Maduro has accused the opposition of preparing alleged “terrorist” attacks. Last week, he asked his party members to activate so-called “Bolivarian fury” throughout the country — a plan in which civilians, soldiers and police will have the task of combating any actions that they consider to be destabilizing. Meanwhile, Machado has begun to assemble her campaign team and mobilize supporters around the country, as if assuming that she’ll be allowed to complete.

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