Venezuelan opposition frontrunner candidate María Corina Machado is facing increased pressure from her alleged allies to choose a replacement who can run against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in the upcoming July sham presidential election, according to a report published by Reuters on Thursday.
Machado, who leads Venezuela’s only mainstream center-right party Vente Venezuela, was elected as the opposition’s candidate in October’s primary election, where she obtained more than 93 percent of the votes. Polls released in late 2023 showed that Machado would easily defeat Maduro with more than 70 percent of the votes. Without the frontrunner opposition candidate, dictator Nicolás Maduro is expected to “win” the fraudulent electoral event, securing a new six-year term for himself.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro (C) and First Lady Cilia Flores (R) greet supporters during a rally to commemorate 20 years of the anti-imperialist declaration of the late former President Hugo Chavez in Caracas on February 29, 2024. (FEDERICO PARRA/AFP via Getty Images)
Venezuela is slated to hold a new sham presidential election on July 28. The Maduro regime, which controls all branches of Venezuela’s government, is refusing to allow Machado’s participation. The regime banned Machado from running for public office through 2030 as punishment for expressing support for international human rights sanctions.
Although the Maduro regime upheld her ban, Machado has refused to step down and designate a substitute person to run in her stead. She also continued her presidential campaign despite the arrests of several of her regional campaign leaders and violent assaults committed by pro-regime thugs.
Machado previously rejected the possibility of naming a replacement candidate, asserting that the one who needs to be replaced is Maduro.
Reuters’s report cited five unnamed sources “with knowledge on the matter.” The sources claimed that this week Venezuelan “opposition” party leaders asked Machado to define a strategy ahead of the upcoming July 28 sham presidential election, stressing that although “they have expressed their support for her candidacy, they want her to decide on an alternative candidate.”
A decision is expected to occur soon, as the socialist-controlled National Electoral Center provided a very limited electoral roadmap. Prospective candidates only have from March 21 to 25 to register their candidates with Venezuela’s top electoral authority.
“There are pressures on her to not leave [the substitution] too late,” one of the sources said, according to Reuters.
Supporters greet opposition presidential hopeful Maria Corina Machado as she arrives at a polling station to cast her ballot during the opposition primary election in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)
Machado, who has not made a new statement on the matter of a substitute candidate at press time, said in an online meeting with the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies held on Thursday that if Maduro refuses to allow free elections and remains in power by force, then the migration of Venezuelans to other countries on the region will grow.
“If Maduro stays in power the hard way, this would mean in the short term the biggest migratory wave we have seen so far,” Machado said. “People tell me so, that they are not leaving because they have hope.”
She continued:
If Maduro imposes himself by force, the region will see a migratory pressure as it has never seen before, but it would also be the consolidation of a system of mafias that has offered our territory as a sanctuary for the activities of the Sinaloa Cartel, the [Colombian People’s Liberation Army] and the Colombian guerrillas, the organized crime gangs that already reach the south and north of the continent, and as a gateway to the regimes of Russia and Iran, which are great allies of Maduro.
Machado stressed that it “would represent a scenario of terrible impact for all Latin American countries.”
Lifting the ban on Machado, as well as other opposition politicians, was one of the terms of the “Barbados Agreement” signed in October between representatives of the Venezuelan opposition and the socialist Maduro regime.
The agreement, signed under the observation of the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saw President Biden award the Maduro regime with a generous oil and gas sanctions relief package in return for a series of vague promises towards holding a “free and fair” presidential election sometime during the second half of 2024.
The Maduro regime did not commit to the terms of the agreement despite the sanctions relief, which has so far resulted in new oil deals and foreign investment opportunities between Venezuela and countries such as India, China, Brazil, France, and Spain, among others.
Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Brian Nichols claimed in early March that Biden’s generous sanctions relief package was “not enough” to convince Maduro to hold a “free and fair” election in Venezuela.
The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) is expected to formally announce Maduro’s candidacy for the July sham election over the weekend.
Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.
