María Corina Machado would be the front-runner to defeat Venezuela’s authoritarian president. But while Nicolás Maduro is in power, fair elections are unlikely
These are the ambitions of María Corina Machado, a 55-year-old former congresswoman who on June 23rd launched her bid to become the opposition’s candidate to unseat Nicolás Maduro, the country’s authoritarian president, in an election due next year. She is the favourite among the 14 contenders to win a primary vote among supporters of opposition parties. That is scheduled for October 22nd; 57% of likely voters back her, according to Poder y Estrategia, a polling company.
Ms Machado, who is renowned for her firebrand style, is on the rightward end of the opposition’s political spectrum. In an interview within Caracas she named Margaret Thatcher as the politician she most admires. Despite the odds against her, she insists that the battle for democracy is not yet lost. Although she has strong reservations about taking part in any election overseen by the regime, the primary “could be the catalyst” for change, she says.
Ms Machado played no formal part in the failed “interim government” of Juan Guaidó. That should help her now. In 2019 the United States, the European Union and dozens of other nations recognised Mr Guaidó, who was head of the legislature, as Venezuela’s legitimate president, but he never came close to achieving power. The project ended in January this year, when the opposition voted to dissolve his non-government. Mr Guaidó is now in the United States.
Ms Machado, though the daughter of an industrialist, insists that she has plenty in common with all Venezuelans. “There are thousands of us that have been robbed by the regime,” she says in the flawless English she learned at a boarding school in Massachusetts. Her three children live abroad, but the regime has barred her since 2014 from leaving the country. Many other families have been divided by the exodus of recent years. “We all just want to have our families back together,” she says.
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