Venezuela election notes - February 2024
Machado's role is not to listen to the analysts, "accept reality," and drop out early. It's to continue fighting against the odds and to maintain whatever leverage she can to push for a transition.
Two things are true:
Maria Corina Machado will probably not be the opposition candidate when the Venezuelan elections are held later this year. It's what most analysts state publicly and pretty much everyone admits privately.
The best strategy for Machado, the opposition, and the international community is to remain 100% committed to Machado's candidacy and never publicly discuss alternative scenarios.
Those two facts play against each other in awkward ways. Machado spoke at recent events with CSIS and the Atlantic Council in which she made her pitch as the legitimate opposition candidate facing an uphill battle to get to elections this year. You can tell she is absolutely annoyed and frustrated by having to answer questions about alternatives to her candidacy so often. It's a distraction from her main messages about the illegitimacy of the Maduro regime and its policies to restrict democracy.
Machado faces regular harassment in her attempts to campaign and organize supporters. A number of her campaign team have been detained and abused by the regime. Beyond her campaign, there is a major crackdown against civil society, likely driven by Maduro's lagging popularity. The Chavistas likely realized during the Essequibo referendum last year that they had lost whatever edge they used to have in terms of mobilizing voters. Despite all the challenges, Machado continues to campaign and she has momentum. She will campaign for months to come, even as the regime continues to block her.
Writing about it makes me part of the problem, but I'm hoping that honestly and openly writing about this contradiction that is at the heart of a lot of Venezuela discussions right now can help illuminate the challenge for those who keep asking about it.
My position as someone who wants to see democracy restored in Venezuela is that Machado is the candidate. She is the legitimate opposition leader who overwhelmingly won the primary. In a truly free and fair election, she would defeat Maduro by at least 20 points. The government's ban on her candidacy is cowardly and disgraceful. There is no reason for her to back down.
My position as someone who provides realistic analysis to clients who operate in and around Venezuela is that Machado is blocked from running. Given that restriction, the more likely scenarios are that some other candidate will take her place at the last moment or the election will be totally fraudulent. I hope I'm wrong, but given the Maduro regime's efforts to remain in power and its history of undemocratic actions, they are unlikely to allow a Machado candidacy to occur and have the repressive tools to prevent it.
Among the opposition's biggest failures in the past two decades has been its willingness to cede ground to the Chavistas when the conditions were unfair or unwinnable. "This election won't be fair so we'll boycott" is a strategy doomed to failure. In continuing a Quixotic run, Machado is breaking that cycle of errors. Oppositions don't defeat dictatorships by dropping out when the odds and rules don't favor them. Machado's role is not to listen to the analysts, "accept reality," and drop out early. It's to continue fighting against the odds and to maintain whatever leverage she can to push for a democratic transition.
Behind the scenes, Machado's campaign is flexible and open to negotiations or alternate paths forward, but they aren't going to cede her candidacy lightly. In public, Machado is the candidate until the day she announces otherwise and she has every right to remain the candidate. By remaining the candidate, she has leverage and she protects the opposition's strongest position in years. Her withdrawal would require a serious and enforceable concession from the regime (hard to do given how regularly the Chavistas break agreements) that leads to a transition away from Maduro's presidency. To get any realistic agreement, her strategy of refusing to back down from the legitimacy of her own candidacy is correct. It doesn't benefit her to say anything differently about it in public. That situation is likely to remain for months to come.
In short, you can stop asking her about it.