Venezuela opposition leader says only huge fraud can stop victory

Venezuela’s best-known opposition leader is campaigning across the country for next month’s presidential election — even though her name is not on the ballot, she is banned from domestic flights, and restaurants that serve her risk being shut down by authorities.

“This is anything but a conventional election,” said María Corina Machado, the 56 year old masterminding the campaign to defeat authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro on July 28. “Many Venezuelans fully understand what this opportunity represents: something far bigger than the election itself.”

Opinion polls show Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) heading for a heavy defeat after a quarter of a century in power. This opens up the possibility of seismic political change in Venezuela, an oil-producing nation that has turned its back on the west and made allies of Russia, China and Iran, amid an economic crisis so disastrous that nearly a quarter of the population have left the country.

At the same time, there have been many false dawns for the opposition. Maduro, in common with his late predecessor Hugo Chávez, has a long history of tactics from arrests to smear campaigns to divide the opposition and stop it from winning.

“If all the votes are counted, we will win by a landslide,” Machado told the Financial Times in a video interview from Caracas. “The only way that won’t happen is if there is a monumental fraud.”

Machado, who first tried to run for president in 2012, insisted this election was different. “The country is convinced that political change is coming,” she said. “In other elections we could have had the votes . . . but people didn’t believe we could win.”

Once known as a firebrand who called for external intervention to help oust Maduro, Machado has moderated in recent years and now advocates dialogue in the event of an opposition victory. This has not helped endear her to Maduro, who described her party Vente Venezuela in March as a “terrorist movement”.

Death threats against Machado were daubed on walls this week in the town of Zaraza in southern Guárico state, signed by El Tren del Llano, a local drug cartel.

“María Corina, we don’t want you in my town, we are going to kill you,” one slogan read in a photo posted on X. “Get out of here, traitor.”

“It’s not the first time that we’ve received these kinds of threats in Guárico,” Machado said, adding that local people had come out to paint over the graffiti — and she would head there regardless.

As well as the risks to her life, Machado has no illusions about the dangers of possible fraud which could torpedo a victory for the candidate who replaced her on the ballot, 74-year-old retired diplomat Edmundo González.

“We are setting up a structure to defend the vote, the likes of which Venezuela has never seen before,” she said. “We are organising almost 600,000 people around the country to [monitor] the polling stations.”

Maduro has no intention of throwing in the towel. The former bus driver may be under investigation by the International Criminal Court for possible crimes against humanity and wanted for drug trafficking by the US. But he has blitzed social media with clips projecting a softer, friendlier image: dancing salsa, playing with a parrot and receiving a gift of what he described as “sexy pyjamas” for his wife Cilia. 

The government dominates the airwaves, courts, security forces and election authority. It has arrested more than 15 of Machado’s aides, while others, including her national campaign chief, have taken refuge in the Argentine embassy.

Ironically, Machado said the government did her a favour when it banned her seven years ago from taking domestic flights, forcing her to drive for days across rough roads in a country more than twice the size of California.

“Nobody can tell me what this country is feeling,” she said. “I know every bend, every pothole, every police checkpoint . . . People recognise me and greet me. I’ve been everywhere.”

When security forces tried to block her way, as she said they did on a recent trip to the Venezuelan Amazon, local people offered to smuggle her around checkpoints or across rivers, she said. “I’ve travelled on motorcycles, on motorboats, on horseback and by tractor.”

Machado’s ability to connect with Venezuelans has prompted some to compare her in this regard with her arch-enemy Chávez, whose revolutionary movement took power in 1999 on a wave of popular support.

“The almost religious enthusiasm that Machado has awakened is similar to what Chávez had,” said Margarita López, a Venezuelan academic. Like Chávez, Machado was “a charismatic leader who inspires great hope in Venezuela amid widespread socio-economic and political dissatisfaction”, she said.

Less than six weeks before the election, the big question remains whether Maduro will allow a vote which he might lose. Machado refuses to be drawn on possible scenarios.

“We are taking it one day at a time,” she said. “But the regime does have to understand that . . . they can’t get away with a massive fraud and then it will be business as usual. That’s not going to happen.”

Michael Penfold, a Venezuela-based global fellow at the Wilson Center, said a very large proportion of the population wanted political change.

“People have struggled with a situation which is desperate and has created the biggest migration crisis in the western hemisphere,” he said. “The government is assessing what will happen in the election. The polls are very damning and the gap [between government and opposition] keeps growing.

“The real question is whether the opposition has the logistical and social organisation to protect the vote on election day.”

Many actors have a stake in the outcome. The Biden administration has invested heavily in negotiating with Maduro to try to coax him towards elections in return for a partial relaxation of heavy economic sanctions. The future of Russia and Iran’s key ally in the region is on the line.

Bondholders are hoping for an opening to renegotiate up to $160bn of defaulted debt, while foreign investors want a chance to revive the country’s once-mighty oil industry. 

Those with most at stake, said Machado, were the Venezuelan people.

“People tell me this could be their last opportunity to meet their grandchildren, whom they only know from WhatsApp,” she said, referring to the refugee exodus. “Or they say: ‘I have three children, two have gone and if the third one goes, I’ll be left alone.’” Machado’s own children live abroad.

Many Venezuelans, she added, were holding out in the hope of change. “The expectations for July 28 are so big and so deep that they have swept away all other barriers and differences,” she said.