By Tim Young, Venezuela Solidarity Campaign for Labour Outlook
In the forthcoming Presidential election in Venezuela on 28 July ten candidates, including current President Nicolás Maduro, will be competing to lead the country until 2030.
The right-wing opposition fielding nine candidates is clearly fragmented. Meanwhile, more reliable polls show Maduro having an advantage – a poll last month from ‘Hinterlaces’ (who regularly call Venezuelan elections well) gave him 55.6% support, with Edmundo González a distant second.
González is the main candidate for the extreme right-wing opposition, the PUD (Plataforma Unitaria Democratica), and is essentially a proxy for extreme right-winger Maria Corina Machado, whom legal authorities have ruled can’t stand in Venezuela in elections due to what they deemed was her unconstitutional; support for previous right-wing violent coup attempts, and campaigns of violence against the countries social movements.
Additionally, she is well known for her particularly reactionary political agenda – including canvassing around the world for support for US sanctions against Venezuela and for Venezuelan state assets to be frozen – or taken over in the case of the Venezuelan US-based oil refining company CITGO.
González is not a well man, leading many Venezuelan commentators to believe Machado is actually in total control of the PUD’s campaign, drawing support from the US. Her programme involves a root and branch privatisation of all the key aspects of the Venezuelan economy: health, education, the oil and gas industries and more besides. It also includes a slavish adherence to the US foreign policy agenda – an even scarier possibility (if that’s possible) if Trump is re-elected.
The beneficiaries of such a programme would clearly be the Venezuelan elites whose wealth, advantages and power have been so eclipsed by the social achievements started by the late, great Hugo Chavez in 1998 that so improved the lives of millions of Venezuelans.
The election is being contested in a context of an economic recovery recognised by numerous international bodies, leading to a recent improvement in Venezuelans’ living standards, despite the illegal US economic blockade that is costing Venezuela almost one trillion dollars. Oil production has recovered to 900,000 barrels a day; 1 million tourists visited the country in 2024; and Government supporters claim that an agricultural production expansion means that now 80% of the country’s total consumption is home-produced.
President Maduro’s supporters cite to the centre of his platform being the 2025-2031 “Homeland Plan”, produced as a result of 63,000 citizens’ assemblies. Some of its seven key points are not new, but do reaffirm and propose improvements in initiatives already in progress, such as further strengthening the economy to fight the economic and financial blockade.
Meanwhile, elements of the extreme right-wing opposition have repeatedly said they will not recognise the election results even before it takes place on 28 July. Interestingly, on June 20 at the initiative of the government, eight of the ten candidates signed an agreement to respect the results. Only two refused to sign: Edmundo González and Enrique Marquez, another hard right-wing candidate.
This is in keeping with the right-wing opposition’s customary practice for the last 25 years of refusing to recognise election results, except when they win, as they did in the National Assembly elections of 2015 – a result that President Maduro accepted immediately.
In the past, notably 2014 and 2017, this practice of not accepting the results has led to opposition-engineered and US-supported waves of street violence. It is feared that this time round, a similar refusal of recognition by the extreme right-wing opposition will also lead to violence.
This is no baseless fear. Repeated statements from spokespersons include threats of violence and ousting the government by force. At root is a loathing and visceral hatred of Chavistas of any kind, especially those of the lower classes.
The corporate media, including the BBC and The Guardian are uncritically parroting the Venezuelan extreme right’s narrative that they lead the polls and that victory will be theirs – and if not, it will be because the results are fraudulent.
A task for solidarity is counteract the media’s lies and distortions and tell the truth about the extensively audited election system in Venezuela praised by the US’s Carter Center as the best in the world. It is vital that the election results issued by Venezuela’s electoral authority, the National Electoral Council, are respected. It is heartening to see that Venezuela’s neighbours, Brazil and Colombia, have both committed to doing so.
The global Left needs to understand the danger of a far-right win in Venezuela – it would mean a key ally lost for progressive governments in places such as Brazil, Colombia, Honduras and Mexico – plus a voice against sanctions on Cuba and Nicaragua removed from the regional and global stages. In Venezuela, it would mean a total social disaster, with extreme neo-liberal economic policies making even the experiences of Pinochet, Bolsonaro and Milei look moderate.
Further, we need to reject and condemn any anti-democratic violence from extreme right-wing, and demand respect for Venezuela’s right to self-determination.