Maduro makes official re-election run
IT’S A tale of two dramatically different political campaigns. On Monday, throngs of supporters of President Nicolás Maduro rallied at a giant stage draped in the red, yellow and blue colours of Venezuela’s flag outside the electoral council headquarters, where he made official his candidacy for a third term lasting until 2031. Meanwhile, his would-be rivals tried to register their candidate, an 80-year-old unknown newcomer, before a looming deadline but found they were unable to do so — in what the opposition denounced as the latest attack on Venezuela’s democracy.
Polls show that Venezuelans would trounce the unpopular Maduro by a landslide if given half a chance.
But the self-proclaimed socialist leader has so far managed to block his chief opponents from running, while alternately negotiating and then reneging on minimal electoral guarantees promised to the US government in exchange for relief from oil sanctions.
In a creative attempt to force Maduro’s authoritarian hand, two smaller opposition parties previously authorised to participate in July’s tightly managed election nominated former academic Corina Yoris last week.
The protest candidacy took friends and foes alike by surprise. An academic, who has taught logic and philosophy at several Venezuelan universities, she’s barely known even in opposition circles. Her only public political role until now was as a member
of the committee that organised last year’s opposition primary in which 2.4 million voters in Venezuela and abroad defied government threats of criminal prosecution to select a candidate to run against Maduro.
But her relative anonymity, squeaky clean record and affectionate grandmotherly air have fast become part of her appeal. Even her name — Corina — is viewed as an asset, a not so subtle reminder of her namesake ally, Maria Corina Machado, whose candidacy was outlawed by the Maduro-stacked Supreme Court after she won last October’s primary by an overwhelming majority.
“We’ve exhausted all of the possibilities,” Yoris said at a press conference on Monday in which she detailed her failed attempts to register, both electronically and in person, her candidacy. “It’s not just the name of Corina Yoris that is being denied, but the name of any citizen that wants to run.”
In registering his own candidacy on Monday, Maduro, without mentioning Yoris by name, blasted his would-be rival as a “puppet” of traditional elites.
He cast his own re-election bid in historic terms, saying it was the continuation of the Bolivarian revolution l aunched a quarter-century ago by the late Hugo Chavez and the only way to protect Venezuela’s sovereignty amid attempts by the US“empire”to dig its “claws” into the OPEC nation’s oil wealth.
“I can only say, with humility, that I am made of the same muddy earth as you,” he said in the televised address at the National Electoral Council.
To date, 10 candidates have registered to compete in the July elections, none of them connected to the main opposition coalition and several seen as representing little threat to Maduro’s power base. Once parties register their candidate, they have until April 16 to name a substitute.