Many fear dirty tricks will keep the unpopular president in power, but the opposition is urging people not to boycott Sunday’s vote

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

After denouncing Venezuela’s food shortages and hyperinflation in a speech ahead of Sunday’s presidential election, the opposition candidate, Henrí Falcón, sat in his campaign bus, sucking a throat lozenge – and chewing over his predicament.

Falcón ought to be the favorite. He’s up against Nicolás Maduro, the deeply unpopular and increasingly authoritarian president who is seeking another six-year term despite leading this oil-rich nation into its worst economic crisis in decades.

Yet Falcón is the underdog.

He’s resigned to the usual dirty tricks from the ruling Socialist Party, including the use of state food hand-outs to lure hungry people into voting for Maduro.

But what most infuriates him is friendly fire: Venezuela’s largest opposition parties are denouncing Falcón as a stooge for participating in an election they say will be a sham – and which they have vowed to boycott.

“This makes it a lot more complicated,” Falcón admits. “But we are going to take risks and follow the democratic path. Now is not the time for politicians to go into hiding.”



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Falcón has been buoyed by polls that show him either ahead or within striking distance of Maduro. He also points to research showing that even on an unfair electoral playing field, it’s almost always better to participate than to stand down.

A 2009 study by the Brookings Institution of more than 100 electoral boycotts – from Afghanistan to Iraq to Peru – found that their goal of rendering elections illegitimate in the eyes of the world was rarely achieved. Instead, they left the boycotting parties in an even weaker state.

Javier Corrales, a Venezuela expert at Amherst College, says that Sunday’s election presents an extremely rare opportunity for voters to remove an autocrat through peaceful means. Surrendering to Maduro, he says, “is the biggest mistake I’ve seen the opposition make in a decade.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Henrí Falcón, the Venezuelan opposition presidential candidate, at a rally. Photograph: Federico Parra/AFP/Getty Images

The leaders of the largest of the 20-some parties that make up the opposition coalition claim that electoral conditions are so grossly weighted in Maduro’s favor that voting on Sunday would be pointless.

Most electoral officials are Maduro loyalists who, in past elections, have turned a blind eye to vote tampering and the last-minute relocation of polling places in opposition strongholds.

The government controls most TV and radio stations which transmit a constant stream of of pro-Maduro propaganda. It is also fomenting the notion that the ballot is not secret and that people who vote for the opposition will lose government jobs, public housing, and vital food handouts.

Quick guide Why is Venezuela in crisis? Show Hide Under the late Hugo Chávez, who ushered in Venezuela’s socialist revolution in 1999, a new constitution and numerous elections placed nearly all government institutions under the control of the ruling Socialist party. This concentration of power was aided by a feuding opposition which carried out ineffectual campaigns and electoral boycotts. After Chávez died of cancer in 2013, he was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro who is even less tolerant of dissent. Growing political authoritarianism has coincided with greater state dominance over the economy. But expropriations, price controls and mismanagement have led to a 40% contraction of the economy in the past five years. Oil accounts for 96% of Venezuela’s export income but many foreign companies have been driven out and production has dropped to a 30-year low. The resulting fiscal crisis has prompted the government to print more money, which has led to hyperinflation and a collapse of the currency. It also means that the government can’t import enough food and medicine to meet demand. Maduro has rejected economic reforms out of loyalty to socialism and because many government officials are allegedly getting rich off the economic distortions – through exchange rate scams and by selling scarce food on the black market.



“It matters little whether this threat is real or perceived. Most people can’t afford to risk their paltry food rations to in order find out,” wrote the Caracas political blogger Emiliana Duarte. Maduro’s re-election pitch “pretty much comes down to ‘vote for me if you want food, starve if you want to make a point’”, she said.

At a campaign rally in the western city of Barquisimeto, Maduro put it this way: “The Fatherland protects you and gives you everything. And you must give the Fatherland political power.”

But just to make sure, the government has banned the two most popular opposition politicians – Leopoldo López who is under house arrest for inciting violence and Henrique Capriles who faces trumped-up corruption charges – from running.

Those allowed on the ballot are two lesser-known figures: Falcón and televangelist Javier Bertucci, who is attracting big crowds by turning his campaign events into makeshift soup kitchens.

Carlos González, an anti-government activist who heads a Venezuelan business association, says the name on the ballot doesn’t matter: “Jesus Christ could be the candidate and Maduro would still prevail because the system is set up for him to win,” he says.

The opposition has taken this argument overseas, convincing the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries to denounce the balloting as a sham.

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“Yes, Venezuelans want to vote. But we don’t want to legitimize the Maduro regime and the misery that he has brought to the country,” said Negal Morales, an opposition lawmaker. “To vote would be to take part in a farce.”

Some critics contend that the boycott came about after the opposition was outmaneuvered by government negotiators. In discussions over electoral conditions, the opposition drew a line in the sand, demanding a neutral electoral tribunal, a postponement of the balloting until October, and the presence of international observers. After months of talks, the government conceded almost nothing.

According to one observer, that left the opposition feeling obliged to save face by making good on its threat to sit out the election.

“Maduro wants people to abstain,” Francisco Rodríguez, Falcón’s chief policy advisor, said. “He wants nobody to come out to vote because that’s the only election he can win. And the opposition fell into that trap.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An employee of Venezuelan electoral council sets up a voting machine at a polling station in Caracas. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP

However, unfair electoral conditions don’t always mean victory for authoritarian rulers. In a 1988 plebiscite in Chile, voters were asked if they approved of extending the regime of military dictator Augusto Pinochet for another eight years. In a surprise result, 56% voted “no” and Pinochet left office two years later.

Looking back on that outcome, Genaro Arriagada, the national director of Chile’s “no” campaign, once declared: “Even in a dictatorship, the worst mistake is to not participate.”

With that in mind, Falcón has been barnstorming the country to convince people to that their votes matter. A former governor of the western state of Lara, Falcón was once a vocal supporter of the Bolivarian revolution ushered in by the late Hugo Chávez in 1999. But Falcón broke with Chávez in 2008 and has become a fierce critic of Maduro. His blunt campaign slogan is ¡Se va! – Spanish for “He’s leaving”.

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Speaking to a crowd in a working-class barrio in the industrial city of Valencia, Falcón called Maduro “the president of hunger and misery”. He pointed out that the average monthly salary is no longer enough to buy a carton of eggs and outlined his plan to scrap the bolívar, Venezuela’s badly devalued currency, and replace it with the US dollar.

Last year the country’s economy shrank by more than 13%; hyperinflation is set to hit 13,000% and the prolonged crisis has driven some 5,000 Venezuelans to leave their country every day, according to the UN.

Maduro has said that he is a victim of “economic warfare” waged from Washington; his critics blame the cratering economy on mismanagement.

Meanwhile a steady stream of multinationals have withdrawn from Venezuela saying that currency controls and shortages make it impossible to do business in the country. This week, the breakfast cereal maker Kellogg’s announced that it was pulling out because of the “economic and social deterioration in the country.”

In the crowd at Valencia, one newfound Falcón supporter, Maricarmen Vidal, said she used to work as a cleaning woman in the house of a middle-class family in Valencia. But to escape the economic meltdown, the family moved abroad and she was thrown out of work.



Now, she eeks out a living selling tiny bags of sugar and coffee on a Valencia street corner. Vidal says about the only thing she knows about Falcón is that he’s not Maduro – “but that’s enough.”