Political factions demonstrate as presidential election race heats up
DUELLING POLITICAL factions took to the streets of Venezuela’s capital on Tuesday for the first competing rallies of the presidential election year, showcasing their ability to draw people en
masse, as voters grapple with political disappointments and uncertainty over the candidate who ultimately will challenge President Nicolás Maduro.
Supporters of Maduro’s ruling party and opposition leader María Corina Machado demonstrated in Caracas a day after Venezuela’s top prosecutor announced the detention of more than 30 people and arrest warrants for a dozen others who allegedly plotted efforts to destabilise the South American country’s government.
But if either camp had hoped to scare the other in numbers, neither gathered the tens of thousands each were capable of last decade.
Maduro supporters – overwhelmingly a mix of state workers, ruling-party community leaders and loyalists of the late President Hugo Chávez – walked across the city, with dozens of them also concentrating in the same plaza where Machado, the winner of an October presidential primary election, was expected to address her own followers.
More than an hour after Machado was supposed to show up, her supporters left the plaza and stopped traffic, allowing her to address them from a makeshift stage as they waved Venezuelan flags.
“They talk about elections, but they are terrified of elections,” Machado said, referring to Maduro and his allies. “But because they know that they do not have votes, they hide ... behind threats, persecution, lies, a fabricated sentence, to try to end us. Let them know clearly, no one takes us out of this electoral route.”
Maduro and the opposition faction behind the primary agreed last year to hold a presidential election in the second half of 2024. The agreement, which also calls on both sides to work on free and fair electoral conditions, earned Maduro’s government some relief from US economic sanctions and resulted in the release of several political prisoners.
Maduro will seek to add six more years to his decade-long, crisis-ridden presidency. His challenger’s participation in the election remains in doubt even though she won the primary with more than 90 per cent support.
The government has banned the former lawmaker from running for office, and Attorney General Tarek William Saab has opened criminal investigations against organisers of the primary, which was carried out with no support from Venezuela’s electoral authorities. Authorities have not shown any evidence supporting the ban