The former legislator has been mocked for years by the Socialist Party members, whose leaders call her “crazy” and a “traitor to the homeland.”
By EFE / Confidencial
HAVANA TIMES – Maria Corina Machado is the new and undisputed leader of the Venezuelan opposition after sweeping to victory in last Sunday’s primary. She now debuts as the leader with a disqualification from running for office on her shoulders, which prevents her from competing in the 2024 presidential elections. However, this is something that has not made her hesitate for a second in her race to remove “Chavism” from power.
With the promise to go “to the end,” this 56-year-old industrial engineer convinced the country that her disqualification, dictated until 2030 by the Comptroller’s Office, will not be an impediment to fight for free, competitive, and transparent elections in 2024 when she hopes to remove Nicolás Maduro from the presidential palace.
Although the path she presents to knock down the obstacles is not entirely clear, on October 22nd María Corina Machado received a clear 93.13% backing at the polls, with which she multiplied the number of votes received the last time she participated in an election, in the 2012 primaries, when she obtained 3.81% of the support.
A tireless radical
A tireless campaigner against the Government, which she labels a dictatorship, Machado has suffered for years the mockery of “Chavism,” whose leaders brand her as “crazy” and a “traitor to the homeland,” the reason for which she was expelled in 2014 from Parliament, after having spoken as an alternate ambassador of Panama to the Organization of American States (OAS), where she denounced the government repression of the Venezuelan protests at the time.
In 2015, state institutions brought down on her two measures intended to remove her from the political arena: a ban on leaving the country that has been in force for eight years without being tried for any crime and an administrative disqualification that prevented her from holding elected office for one year. However, the Comptroller’s Office communicated in July 2023 that the prohibition would last until 2030.
Thus, practically in the last decade, the former congresswoman has been on a constant tour through every town in Venezuela, where she has been gaining followers in dribs and drabs until she became the electoral phenomenon of today. The confinement to which she was condemned ended up strengthening her.
She shouted to Chavez: “To expropriate is to steal.”
However, the antecedents as the undisputed leader of the opposition were somewhat elusive for her. In terms of popularity, she spent years behind other names such as Henrique Capriles, Leopoldo Lopez, and Juan Guaido, the same ones that today are loathed by the grassroots of anti-Chavism that sees in Machado a “coherent” woman for having refused to negotiate with the Government.
That same drive was the one that led her in 2012 to disrupt Hugo Chavez (1999-2013) during his speech of almost nine hours before the deputies. Maria Corina rebuked the socialist leader, shouting, “to expropriate is to steal,” a slogan with which she gained notoriety but not support.
A tireless politician who promoted anti-government protests every year between 2013 and 2019, a six-year period in which it seemed that the few sympathizers she had were dwindling, to whom she asked in 2018 to take to the streets to demand Maduro’s resignation, just when the president was reelected with the lowest turnout in this type of elections.
She has earned the citizen’s trust
Ten years after failing with her offer of a “popular capitalism” for Venezuela, the liberal won the citizens’ trust with a massive privatization plan that includes the state-owned oil company PDVSA, the primary source of wealth in the country.
In her opinion, it is urgent to reduce the size of the Government and the intervention of the State in private affairs to generate an economic big bang that will finish pulling the South American nation out of the backwardness in which it finds itself after eight years of financial contraction. However, indicators began to improve slightly in 2021.
Today, María Corina Machado is at the top of the opposition, divided into so many fractions that it is impossible to quantify them, so she must, among her first challenges, gather as many supporters as she can to shield her candidacy, which will only be possible through negotiation with the Executive.
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