Many Venezuelans shout to María Corina Machado in the street: “I enable you with my vote.” And this liberal politician stuck to it during the opposition primary campaign, winning the polls on Sunday with more than 90% of approval. Citizens kept their word and elected her as the opposition candidate against Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections, in primaries that, despite all the difficulties, were a success. “Here the people of Venezuela are the pioneers,” Machado often says within forms of politics that involve believing in the discourse and defending it to the end. But when Chavismo comes out on top, everything changes. Here the author is Maduro and the politician who won the primaries is initially banned from holding public office for 15 years. For example, she cannot apply for the year 2024, for which she was elected yesterday.
To understand the sentence imposed on Machado, it is good to know some data. According to the NGO Acceso a la Justicia, Chavismo has barred more than 1,400 citizens from holding public office since 2002, including many civil servants. Among them are some of the most well-known opposition leaders or those with the greatest popular support. The Maduro government, which tightly controls all of the country’s institutions, is trying to use this legal trick to neutralize its opponents. Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles were the subject of controversial court decisions to exclude them from the political game, as was the case with Machado.
The political persecution against the already elected candidate began in 2014. At that time, Machado represented the most radical wing of the Venezuelan opposition. His direct confrontations with Hugo Chávez are part of the country’s history. That year, Machado was dismissed from the National Assembly for “treason” for agreeing to join a Panamanian delegation to address the OAS General Assembly in Washington. In 2015, she was barred from holding public office for a year by the Comptroller General of the Republic – Citizen Power’s controlling authority – just five months before the general elections in which Machado planned to participate.
The opponent then explained that the Comptroller’s Office disqualified her because she did not list payment of meal vouchers, called basket tickets, on her financial statement affidavit. “They never gave me those basket tickets. That’s why I didn’t include them in the document that I submit once a year,” he publicly defended himself. It does not matter. Machado did not take part in these elections.
Since then and up to now, the path of politics has gone through ups and downs of popularity. Given the opposition majority, Machado has remained more or less unnoticed in recent years as she defended a groundbreaking line of confrontation with Chavismo. He distanced himself from the postulates of the majority of democratic forces during the failed interim government of Juan Guaidó and opposed all different attempts at dialogue with Chavismo to find a negotiated solution. Since 2020, he has also defended that the opposition’s turnout legitimizes Chavismo and refuses to participate. Given the lack of success in ending the government by force, a more moderate speech and the resumption of the electoral path gave Machado back the luster he had lost for years.
In these months of campaigning for the primaries, politics managed to connect with a large part of a politically disoriented Venezuelan society that saw in this woman the determination that had so often failed in an opposition that was always divided and hesitant, what the best strategy is to defeat Chavismo. Machado now promises to democratically overthrow the government and take part in fair and free elections, which Chavismo committed to only a week ago under pressure from the United States. In the midst of the election campaign, when it became clear that Machado would have no rival in the primaries, Chavismo’s judicial machinery began to work.
At the end of June, the Comptroller’s Office imposed a sanction that barred the politician from holding public office for 15 years. The decision was pushed by MP José Brito, who is part of the so-called “Scorpions” group that brings together former opponents of Nicolás Maduro who are now installed by the government. Brito was the one who asked the Comptroller’s Office to “review the status” of the possible candidate for the 2024 presidential election, which, after a “property investigation,” decided to disqualify her for 15 years. The company explained that the sanction was due to the failure to provide an affidavit as a former MP regarding the authorization of some funds during the audited period. The same thing for which she was disqualified for 12 months in 2015, but whose sentence has now been extended to 15 years. The Court of Auditors also accused her of being Guaidó’s accomplice in corruption schemes, even though the politician was never part of the interim government, and criticized her for defending US sanctions against the Venezuelan economy. By this point, primary polls were already showing a fired-up Machado.
And so until today. Machado is now effectively the opposition candidate for the presidential election, but everything depends on the future of her disqualification. Agreements signed last week in Barbados between the government and the opposition stipulate that approval will be encouraged “for all candidates and political parties” in view of next year’s elections, but the government has already raised the possibility of revoking the approval Distanced. Disqualification on Machado. After the success of Sunday’s primaries, with an estimated more than two million voters, the fight against disqualification begins, in which the popular support for Machado, the expected solidarity of the entire opposition with the elected candidate and the pressure exerted by the United States.
In any case, the last word belongs to Maduro himself, who, although he must keep open the new phase of understanding with Washington on the extension of the easing of sanctions on gas and oil, is also clear that he does not intend to give up power. Given the mobilization of the opposition on Sunday and the winner’s popularity ratings, which are well above those of the president in free, fair elections with international monitoring and activated Machado, Maduro has everything to lose.
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