Venezuelan election could lead to political shift or give President Maduro six more years

Polls have opened in Venezuela, where people are voting Sunday in a presidential election whose outcome will either lead to a seismic shift in politics or extend by six more years the policies that caused the world’s worst peacetime economic collapse.

Whether it is left-wing President Nicolás Maduro who is chosen, or his main opponent, retired diplomat Edmundo González, the election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. local time. The number of eligible voters is estimated to be around 17 million.

Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro.

Yet, Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.

Maduro, 61, is facing off against an opposition that has managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.

González is representing a coalition of opposition parties after being selected in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, who was blocked by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Tribunal of Justice from running for any office for 15 years.

Machado, a former lawmaker, swept the opposition’s October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.

Sunday’s ballot also features eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatens the governing rule.

Venezuela sits atop the world’s largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000% led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.

Sanctions from US President Donald Trump’s administration seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election — which the US and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.

In recent days, Maduro has crisscrossed Venezuela, inaugurating hospital wards and highways and visiting rural areas where he had not set foot in years. His pitch to voters is one of economic security, which he underscores with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates.

The capital, Caracas, saw an increase in commercial activity after the pandemic, bolstering an economy the International Monetary Fund forecasts will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71% from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed of family of four for a month — costs an estimated $385.

The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.

González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn’t materialise. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

An April poll by Caracas-based Delphos said about a quarter of Venezuelans were thinking about emigrating if Maduro wins Sunday. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.

Most Venezuelans who migrated over the past 11 years settled in Latin America and the Caribbean. In recent years, many began setting their sights on the US.