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Jorge Rodriguez, head of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s campaign headquarters and leader of the National Assembly, believes that Venezuela’s presidential election to be held on July 28 will be very similar to the presidential election held in Mexico on June 2.
First, because, as he said at a public event about the Mexican election, in both cases the far right “and the empire that wants to conquer us” waged ferocious disinformation campaigns against progressive candidates.
Secondly, as he said, because in Mexico, the polls showed the winning presidential candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, in third place, which, by the way, was wrong. On the contrary, the vast majority thought she was the winner by a wide margin, as it happened.
But according to Jorge Rodriguez’s story, the same thing is happening in Venezuela and Mexico, as the polls show the opposition winning, and according to him, what will happen on July 28 is a landslide electoral victory for President Nicolas Maduro, who seeks a second consecutive term in office amid the country’s economic and social collapse.
The reality is that, unlike in Mexico, most pre-election surveys conducted in Venezuela by reputable firms put the official candidate (in this case, Maduro) in second place, more than 10 percentage points behind Edmundo González Urrutia of the opposition Democratic Unity Platform (PUD).
The 74-year-old former diplomat eventually became the candidate of the opposition coalition after it ousted the Maduro-led regime, first with Maria Corina Machado, who won the United Democratic Alliance primary last October with 92.3% of the vote, and later with her successor Corina Yoris.
Finally, the National Electoral Council (CNE), led by Chavista Elvis Amoroso, agreed at the last minute last March 26 to register the then unknown González Urrutia as the candidate of the United Democratic Alliance, but given the advantage given to him by several opinion polls, the opposition warned that the regime could use any pretext to exclude him from the race.
Félix Seijas, director of the polling agency Delphos, insists that González Urrutia concentrates around 50% of voting intentions, while Maduro has 27% and his ceiling is 30%, which is the percentage of the Chavista critical mass.
The president’s main political operator, Jorge Rodriguez, said such investigations were part of a “deception operation” aimed at creating an “opinion matrix of fraud” about the election.
“They will claim there was fraud and they will write it off,” Rodriguez said during a campaign event broadcast after Mexico’s June 2 election that was live on state media.
Then came the threat: Anyone who violated “the peace of the republic” before, during, and after the elections “must go to jail.”
The threat is credible, as the Venezuelan Criminal Forum recorded 278 political prisoners in the country as of June 10. About twenty of them participated in González Urrutia’s campaign.
The former diplomat, who is the most popular candidate backed by opposition leader María Corina Machado, was excluded from the electoral ballot by the regime’s decision, but has been committed to campaigning for González Urrutia and, according to several surveys, has managed to transfer their political capital to him.
High exit costs
Benigno Alarcón, director of the Center for Political and Government Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University, told Proceso that these elections are “high risk” for Maduro because “for the first time he will face a visible opposition. According to the most conservative calculations, this at least doubles his willingness to vote.”
An excerpt from the report published in Proceso magazine, issue 0013, corresponding to July 2024, a digital copy of which can be purchased at the following URL: This link.
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