President Nicolás Maduro faces the first serious challenge to his authority in years - and has warned of ‘fratricidal civil war’ if he loses
President Nicolás Maduro faces the first serious challenge to his authority in years - and has warned of ‘fratricidal civil war’ if he losesSupporters of the president of Venezuela , Nicolás Maduro, attend a campaign event in Caracas this week in advance of Sunday's election. Photograph: Jesus Vargas/Getty ImagesIn a functioning democracy it would be vanishingly hard to imagine an incumbent winning an election with a record like that of Nicolás Maduro.
The last reliable nationwide test of public opinion was the reasonably free – if not fair – election in 2015 for the national assembly in which the opposition won a crushing victory. Maduro quickly moved to strip the assembly of its powers and since then he has refused to risk legitimate elections, rigging them instead. His win in 2018′s presidential poll was widely condemned as fraudulent and he has faced down all subsequent efforts at home and abroad to force him from office.
In the face of this first serious challenge to Maduro’s authority in years it is unclear how legitimate the vote will be. The regime has resisted international efforts to observe it, even by regional leftist politicians, raising fears it could again resort to fraud as in the past. As to the likelihood of Maduro accepting defeat, he has warned that if González does win the country would fall “into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war”.
Nicolas Maduro Edmundo Gonzalez
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