The Venezuelan people are waiting to breathe a sigh of relief after tomorrow’s presidential election!

Tomorrow, Latin America and the Caribbean’s most electorally savvy voters will go to the polls in Venezuela, choosing whether to continue the Bolivarian Socialist Revolution launched by President Hugo Chávez or reject President Nicolás Maduro and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

The Venezuelan people have gone to the polls 31 times in the past 25 years, an average of one election every 10 months, and the PSUV has won all but two of them.

Chavez’s successor is Maduro, who has led Venezuela since Chavez’s death in 2013, even as Venezuela faces the harshest punishment from the United States, which has imposed 936 unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) on the South American country, which has the world’s largest certified oil reserves.

The parties opposed to Chávez, Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela have been openly supported by the United States in successive presidential and municipal elections, and the United States has never hidden its intention to regain control of Venezuela’s oil and gas, which was once controlled by the American oil company Chevron and other US-based “Seven Sisters” multinational corporations.

Chavez and Maduro accelerated the nationalization of the country’s energy resources, and Venezuela was subject to hundreds of sanctions, which prevented it from importing basic medicines and food for hospitals, purchasing COVID-19 vaccines, or importing necessary parts for electricity, water and other basic public utilities.

Millions of Venezuelans have been forced to migrate because of U.S. sanctions — mostly to the United States, but if caught crossing the border illegally they are blocked at official points of entry and forcibly deported.

The country suffered hyperinflation of 150,000% and a 150% reduction in GDP, but Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela made and implemented difficult decisions that ultimately allowed the country to survive the economic shock, thanks to their confidence in attracting international support from friendly countries willing to buy the country’s oil and gas despite sanctions, such as China, India, Iran, Russia, South Africa and other developing countries.

The closest the United States has come to leaving Washington’s imprint in Caracas has been under the Trump administration, when the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) lost its majority in the National Assembly in 2015 and the then-U.S. president threw his full weight behind notorious lawmaker Juan Guaido.

Although Maduro is the current democratically elected president, the United States and at least 50 countries still recognize Guaidó as an illegitimate “alternative president” without achieving regime change through elections. Guaidó has disappointed his supporters and has even been accused of different forms of corruption, including stealing political support donations raised from abroad and conspiring with right-wing elements to use undemocratic means to overthrow and replace Maduro.

After Guaidó stepped down, the United States and its allies backed the current main opposition presidential candidate, Edmundo González, who replaced Maria Collina, who was found to be incompatible with the country’s electoral laws, especially by advocating and inviting the United States to impose sanctions on Venezuela, violating Venezuela’s sovereignty.

Maduro has the support of 13 left-wing and progressive parties, and the nine far-right opposition candidates are divided internally, but the United States’ external support for the opposition remains as strong as ever as Washington sets its sights on Venezuela’s endless energy resources.

Venezuela has billions of dollars worth of oil reserves, with some Venezuelans even boasting that “we have more oil than Saudi Arabia has sand.”

But the July 28 presidential election is not just a matter between the United States and Venezuela. In the eyes of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, it is also a choice between yesterday and tomorrow, between continued progress or a return to the past that Chavez, Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela have opposed and repeatedly won.

Venezuela has a well-functioning electoral machine that former U.S. President James Jimmy Carter praised as the best and most transparent he had ever seen; national electoral authorities also organize mock pre-election tests to ensure that every voter knows how and where to vote.

This time, the United Socialist Movement faces an opposition that makes sweeping promises, such as a “government for all the people” if it wins — but without specifics — but has also begun making excuses for not winning.

Earlier this week, in the final days before the election, the opposition and its foreign media backers had been spreading rumors online that the United Socialist Party was planning “violent actions” if it lost the election.

The opposition also plans to release their own so-called “exit poll” results – separate from the official count by the National Electoral Commission.

The opposition also conducted “secret polls” claiming that González was ahead of Maduro, but did not provide any specific numbers; and was reportedly planning to claim “electoral fraud” even before the official counting began or ended.

But Maduro and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela are confident of victory, pointing out that the experienced ruling party has a good organization in every constituency across the country that other parties cannot match, and that voters always understand and support the government and the ruling party’s efforts to overcome more than 900 US sanctions.

Moreover, time and history are on the side of Maduro and the PSUV: the elections will be held four days after the 241st anniversary of the birth of Liberator Simón Bolívar and at a time when the PSUV government has achieved seven consecutive quarters of economic growth, thanks to several specific economic programs implemented to circumvent US sanctions.

As Venezuelans calmly went about their daily business in the first few days of the final week before the election, the foreign observers and journalists they encountered and questioned mostly expressed support for Maduro, with many openly stating that they simply did not trust the González-Corina electoral agreement because it was backed by countries that have imposed nearly a thousand sanctions.

Those Venezuelans who left are now returning, disappointed that they left their homeland in search of the elusive “opportunities” they expected.

Meanwhile, PSUV supporters around the world are waiting for the election results to be announced tomorrow to breathe a sigh of relief.