Why the election in Venezuela matters to the world

Venezuela is poised for a presidential election this Sunday, as voters face a crucial choice: re-elect President Nicolas Maduro or give the opposition a chance to implement their promises and reverse the ruling party’s policies.

Historically fractured opposition parties have coalesced behind a single candidate, giving the United Socialist Party of Venezuela its most serious electoral challenge in a presidential election in decades.

Maduro is being challenged by former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who represents the resurgent opposition, and eight other candidates.

Supporters of Maduro and Gonzalez marked the end of the official campaign season on Thursday with massive demonstrations in the capital, Caracas.

Here are some reasons why the election matters to the world:

Migration impact

The election will impact migration flows regardless of the winner.

The instability in Venezuela for the past decade has pushed more than 7.7 million people to migrate, which the UN's refugee agency describes as the largest exodus in Latin America’s recent history.

A nationwide poll conducted in April by the Venezuela-based research firm Delphos indicated that about a quarter of the people in Venezuela were thinking about emigrating. The poll had a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. However the emigration in masses if proven correct as polls suggets, might pose an increased risk to Venezuala's economy that is willing to gain momentum in the aftermath of presidential election.

Opposition leader absent

The most talked-about name in the race is not on the ballot: Maria Corina Machado. The former lawmaker emerged as an opposition star in 2023.

She faces a ban on her candidacy but has thrown her support behind Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, a former ambassador who has never held public office, helping a fractious opposition unify.

They are campaigning together on the promise of economic reform that will lure back the millions of people who have migrated since 2013.

Gonzalez began his diplomatic career as an aide to Venezuela’s ambassador in the US in the late 1970s. He was posted to Belgium and El Salvador, and served as Caracas’ ambassador to Algeria.

His last post was as ambassador to Argentina during Hugo Chávez’s presidency, which began in 1999.

What are Maduro's chances?

Maduro faces an economic crisis caused by a drop in oil prices and other issues.

However, he can still bank on a cadre of die-hard believers, known as Chavistas, including millions of public employees and others.

Maduro is the heir to Hugo Chavez, a popular socialist who expanded Venezuela’s welfare state while locking horns with the United States.

Sick with cancer, Chavez handpicked Maduro to act as interim president upon his death. He took on the role in March 2013, and the following month, he narrowly won the presidential election triggered by his mentor’s death.

Who is Nicolas Maduro?

The 61-year-old was born in Caracas to a working-class family. According to his personal account, his grandparents were originally Jewish and had later converted to Catholicism.

The son of a prominent union leader, Maduro started off as a bus driver and soon gravitated toward his father’s path by participating in trade unionism. He asserts that he still enjoys driving and takes pride in his humble origins.

His worldview is defined by a mix of communism and socialism, the two political ideologies he followed from a young age. He received training and educational courses from different communist groups including Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro’s communist party.

In the early 1990s, he was recognised as a close aide to Hugo Chavez, the country’s first socialist president, who led the Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution. Chavez, a fierce anti-American politician, had successfully defeated a US-orchestrated military coup in 2002.

Maduro was later elevated to the top post in the foreign ministry. When Chavez died of cancer in 2013, Maduro assumed the interim presidency, according to Chavez's wishes.

The 2018 elections which Maduro won but were largely boycotted by the opposition ignited a political crisis in the country. Juan Guaido challenged the results and with the help of the US, built a nationwide campaign against Maduro.

In the aftermath of 2018 elections, the opposition-majority National Assembly with the support of mainly Western countries declared Maduro a usurper of the presidency, declaring Guaido as their legitimate president, despite never running as president.

US-backed Guaido's attemtps to seize control of the country gained strength after some parts of the military joined Guaido to oust Maduro from the presidency, bringing months of political wrangling to its climax.

With significant support from both the Venezuelan people and the armed forces, Maduro succeeded in protecting the democratic election results, leading Guaido to return to the US empty-handed.

Maduro inherited Chavez' legacy

He defended Chavez’ version of socialism against local elites and American “imperialists”, and cultivated allies from Russia’s Vladimir Putin to Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Despite his high popularity, the oil-producing Venezuelan economy experienced a steep decline from 2014 onward mainly because of decreasing oil prices.

Maduro described the recession as being a result of “sabotage” engineered by "American imperialist designs".