Venezuela sets its presidential election for July 28 as the opposition candidate remains barred

The highly anticipated presidential election in Venezuela is scheduled for July 28, which is also the birthday of the late, fiery leader Hugo Chávez. This announcement was made by officials on Tuesday, and they are moving forward with a tight campaign season that raises questions about the participation of both foreign observers and the front-runner of the opposition.

It is generally anticipated that President Nicolás Maduro would seek reelection. Initially, his administration worked with an opposition group supported by the US government to discuss election arrangements, but over the last two months, tensions have increased between the parties.

On the other hand, the opposition’s demand that the election take place in the second half of the year was satisfied by the date that National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso declared.

After Maduro and his opponents decided on that general timeline in October, the months in between were supposed to be used for campaign mobilisation, voter register updates by authorities, and mission planning and deployment by foreign electoral observers.

Importantly, the October agreement called on both parties to “promote the authorization of all presidential candidates and political parties” to run in the election, provided that they abide by the law. The agreement was signed in the Caribbean island of Barbados and concentrated on terms intended to level the playing field for the 2024 election.

However, the nation’s highest court upheld an administrative ruling in January that forbade Maria Corina Machado, Maduro’s most formidable opponent this year, from seeking public office.

Amoroso, under his previous capacity as the country’s comptroller, signed the announcement of Machado’s ban from office last summer. He did not address her candidacy during his nationally televised announcement Tuesday, just four days after lawmakers proposed to the ruling party-loyal National Electoral Council more than 20 possible options, ranging from as soon as mid-April to as late as December.

Last month, the opposition’s chief negotiator, Gerardo Blyde, said the group favored a December vote.

David Smilde, an expert on Venezuelan politics at Tulane University, said Maduro’s government seeks to thread the needle with the July 28 date, fulfilling enough the Barbados agreement to keep it alive “while pushing on the opposition to try to get it to split or abstain.”

“An ideal outcome for Chavismo would be for the opposition to split or abstain, allowing Maduro to win on a relatively clean Election Day,” he said, referring to the political movement started by Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor. “And with less than five months, this also puts international observation in a tight spot.”

International electoral observers typically need several months to prepare for an election.

Amoroso said campaigning will be allowed from July 4-25.

The Unitary Platform and Maduro’s government agreed in October during talks in Barbados that the election should be held in the second half of the year while not specifying which month. The agreement earned Maduro relief from some economic sanctions imposed by the U.S.

Machado has insisted throughout her campaign that voters, not ruling-party loyalists, are the rightful decision-makers of her candidacy. On Tuesday, she asked supporters gathered for a rally in western Venezuela for “calm and firmness” in the coming days, but she did not offer any explanations on how she intends to overcome the ban against her.

Machado won an independently run primary held last year by the Unitary Platform, the U.S.-backed opposition faction. She won more than 90% of the vote, with more than 2 million voters turning out for the primary including in strongholds of Maduro’s ruling party.

Tuesday was the 11th anniversary of Chávez death. Smylde said the ruling party will use his birthday to mobilize voters.

While the opposition’s candidate remains in doubt, Maduro will be seeking six more years in office. His entire decade-long presidency has been marked by political, social and economic crisis. Under his watch, millions of Venezuelans have fallen into poverty and more than 7.4 million have migrated.

Benigno Alarcón, political science professor at the Andrés Bello Catholic University of Caracas, said the tight schedule “promises to be full of big questions” but the ruling party is betting on the criticism to eventually subside and not bring major consequences like in the last election cycle, which led to crippling economic sanctions and the recognition of an opposition leader as the country’s legitimate leader.

“Evidently, the government’s main concern is to get the opposition candidate who was elected in the primary, María Corina Machado, out of the way and reduce any time to continue the debate on her qualification or anything else,” he said. “That is basically what is behind this decision.”