It sounds like a story from Hollywood: an unknown who is used by his party as an insignificant placeholder – only to be allowed to actually run in the next presidential election in his home country. With the best prospects of victory at that.
That’s exactly what happened to Edmundo González Urrutia: The opposition in Venezuela chose the 74-year-old as their joint candidate at the weekend, although he is not a charismatic politician, but rather a grayish ex-diplomat with a tie, thick glasses and a few extra pounds much. In the next elections on July 28th, he of all people will have to compete with Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian ruler, who is determined to remain in office.
The opposition had torn each other apart in the past
To call all of this a surprise would be an understatement. Neither González himself nor the government in the capital Caracas had expected this step. The opposition, on the other hand, is celebrating its coup: instead of tearing each other apart as in the past, they have actually united behind a candidate. “We are not only united,” said opposition politician Omar Barboza when González’s candidacy was announced late on Friday evening local time: “We are super united!”
That was exactly what the ruling party in Venezuela, the Chavistas, always wanted to avoid. They have been in power for a quarter of a century now, initially with broad support from the population, but then a severe economic crisis followed. There were also massive allegations of fraud during the last vote in 2018. Since then, opposition politicians have been arrested or forced into exile.
After all, last October the government agreed to hold elections that would be reasonably free and fairly fair. In return, the USA relaxed the sanctions it had imposed on the country. But a date for the vote hadn’t even been set yet; the regime in Caracas had already blocked the first candidate: María Corina Machado, a 56-year-old who had previously won a landslide victory in the opposition’s primaries. Machado tried to have a deputy run, but when a candidate was finally found, she wasn’t even allowed to register.
He is the lowest common denominator
What followed were weeks of negotiations, as various parties within the fragmented opposition had managed to register candidates for the election. Some of them really wanted to run, for example Manuel Rosales, the former governor of Zulia state. In other cases, however, they were simply placeholders, some party members who made their names available in the expectation that they would be replaced as soon as things got serious.
The fact that this didn’t happen with Edmundo González Urrutia is probably because he was the lowest common denominator that everyone could somehow agree on. The fact that he was completely unknown to the vast majority of Venezuelans is almost irrelevant. What is much more important is that the entire conservative opposition now appears to be behind him. In recent surveys, around half of the participants said they wanted to support their candidate, whatever his final name was. And the first campaigns have already started online, with the motto: “Edmundo pa’ todo el mundo” – Edmund for the whole world.
The big question now is how Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro will react to González’s appointment. The government in Caracas has not yet commented on Urrutia’s candidacy, but it will most likely try to exclude him from taking part in the vote. One possibility for this would be a lawsuit that is already before the Supreme Court and aims to completely remove González’s party from the list of participants.
However, this would be a radical step that would further discredit the elections on July 28th. Maduro wants to prevent that. Although the USA has now reimposed a large part of the sanctions, Washington has at the same time left a few back doors open, with licenses, for example, that can be issued in specific cases for the sale of Venezuelan gas and oil. And the government in Caracas also knows that this income is vital for the country.