Venezuela has lived today a democratic milestone in full dictatorship. Eight of the 14 candidates for the opposition primaries participated in a debate planned by 37 student and civil society organizations, held in the main hall of the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB), broadcast only online and with the country’s television stations watching. to other side.
Since Chavismo came to power at the end of the last century, debates have become a rare political bird in the midst of pro-government advantage and hegemonic control of the media. Even after several years without celebrating any, the closest thing to a face to face was disputed by four revolutionary candidates at the foot of Hugo Chávez’s grave, in another example of the “participatory and protagonist” democracy that the “people’s president” boasts of. .
“We are doing this under a dictatorship, as the first step to reestablish democracy,” opened the fire Andrés Velásquez, candidate of La Causa R and winner of the elections for governor in the state of Bolívar, snatched by the revolution to hand it over to a general for reasons strategic: that area of ??the country is home to the mines from where the gold smuggling is carried out.
From minute 1, all eyes were on the conservative María Corina Machado, the great favorite for the October primaries and who remains in contention after suffering the illegal disqualification for 15 years, ordered by the Miraflores Palace. And she did not disappoint in her first volley: “Venezuela woke up, it wants profound change. This time we are going to defeat Maduro to bring our boys back home. We are going to defeat socialism forever.”
The national coordinator of Vente Venezuela did not lower the volume in all her interventions, convinced that “we are facing a unique opportunity” and without falling into deception: “Here nobody sucks their finger, without freedom there is no prosperity. Venezuela is in ruins “.
One by one, the candidates presented messages and strategies, but several of them were missing, especially one: Henrique Capriles. The main alternative to Machado justified his absence with the controversial assumption that the debate would deepen the internal differences that have done so much damage to the opposition.
In the end, Capriles was wrong again, since what he experienced today has meant the takeoff of the primaries under the cloak of unity and of the frontism against Maduro. A white-collar debate, marked by respect, with encounters and differences, between eight democrats who cover a good part of the ideological spectrum (social democrats, Christian democrats, liberals, independents), including the progressive Tamara Adrián, the first transsexual deputy in Latin America , warning that “winter is coming”, in reference to the main matrix of Game of Thrones.
“We have the opportunity to unite in a single movement, to get out of the dictatorship to democracy,” stressed the Christian Democrat César Pérez Vivas summarizing the first intervention of all of them.
The attack was also Freddy Superlano, standard bearer of Voluntad Popular and substitute for Juan Guaidó after his exile. “While we are meeting here, the dictatorship’s laboratories are trying to attack the primary,” recalled Superlano, who, like Machado and Capriles, suffered from illegal political disqualification, even the most grotesque of all: he was suddenly disqualified after winning the elections for governor in Barinas.
The most controversial point came with the Gordian knot of the primaries, around what the strategy will be in the event that the winning candidate of the opposition internals is disabled or is later. Machado, well ahead in the polls, did not accept the imposition of a kind of successor line: “We cannot play by the rules of tyranny.” Candidates pledged to work on this issue, including centrist Delsa Solórzano, social democrat Carlos Prosperi and independent Andrés Caleca.
Not everyone was there, but even those who did not want to participate, like Capriles, and those who were not invited, like Nicolás Maduro, made an “act of presence” through social networks. The former presidential candidate responded via Twitter to one of Maduro’s usual insults in his television preaching (“Maduro, admit that you failed and you will continue to fail”), but the big surprise came when the revolutionary leader counterattacked on the same network social, something unprecedented: “I told you a ghost and you stayed a ghost, because instead of scaring you make you laugh. Now you intend to encourage economic warfare again, we are not going to allow it. Venezuela respects itself!”
Capriles’ final response silenced the “son of Chávez”: “Ghost? Is it the ghost of Tareck El Aissami who does not appear, nor do the more than 26,000 million dollars that were stolen from Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) since 2020 and they were from the Venezuelan people. The disappearance of the oil czar is one of the great unknowns after the penultimate millionaire scandal led by Chavismo.
Governor Manuel Rosales also remained in the shadows. His party, Un Nuevo Tiempo, has presented a fake candidate, José Rafael Hernández, because the statutes of the primaries allow the change of standard-bearer in the coming weeks. “That someone has more votes does not make him the owner of the opposition,” attacked Rosales, who has softened his criticism of Maduro since he was rehabilitated electorally.
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