María Corina Machado

A new presidential term is set to begin officially in Venezuela on January 10. Despite the electoral commission’s failure to release the results of the July 28 election, Nicolás Maduro’s swearing-in appears inevitable. Opposition leader Edmundo González Urrutia, however, says he’ll be inaugurated as the country’s new leader. Will he return to Caracas? That’s the question Venezuelans keep asking, with González Urrutia having promised exactly that. “I am going to return to Venezuela to take the responsibility that 8 million citizens gave me,” he told Infobae five days ago after meeting with Argentinian president Javier Milei. This week he also met with President Biden, Uruguayan president Lacalle Pou and Panamanian president José Raúl Mulino.

Nicolás Maduro’s rival Edmundo González and opposition leader María Corina Machado told reporters at around 6:30 p.m. Monday that with more than 70 percent of votes counted, González is more than doubling Maduro’s votes. During the press conference, both candidates emphasized peaceful protests, especially as thousands began taking to the streets the day before, when the country’s electoral council declared that Maduro had won with 51 percent of the vote. They called on voters to gather at 11 a.m. Tuesday. “I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said to his cheering supporters from outside his campaign’s headquarters in Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.

Sunday night was a long one in Venezuela. At midnight, the much anticipated yet dubious results came in for the South American country's election. The head of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso — a close ally of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro who has served as a deputy for his party — said that with 80 percent of ballots counted, Maduro had won with 51 percent of the vote. His rival, Maria Corina Machado’s replacement, Edmundo González, ended with 44 percent. The opposition has a different story. “Venezuela has a new president and his name is Edmundo González Urrutia. We won! And everyone knows it,” Machado said from a press conference following some silence after Maduro’s announced win.

At 3:45 a.m., the sun was not yet out in the Venezuelan valley of Caracas, but Andrés, a twenty-two-year old who lives in the outskirts, woke up and with the Gloria Al Bravo Pueblo national anthem at maximum volume, roused his family too. From deep in the valley, Natalia showed up to the polls at 7 a.m. She then headed back to pick her elderly parents; “they can skip the line now,” she tells me.  Like them, thousands of others got up Sunday morning with a mission: make the Venezuelan presidential election — the most consequential one in twenty-five-years — fraud-proof. The logic: the world has to see what Venezuelans see, eyes don’t lie.  “It's 5 a.m. and we have work!,” said the face of the opposition, María Corina Machado.

Venezuelans will gear up to vote in what has devolved into an unfair and unfree presidential election Sunday — one that nonetheless offers its citzens the best chance in a decade to get rid of the twenty-five-year-old Chavista regime that brought the oil-rich nation to its knees. Nicolás Maduro, the man who, among other things, caused a forty-two-place drop in Venezuela’s Press Freedom Index in ten years, will be facing Edmundo González. González, a little known diplomat who served in Algeria and Argentina, became the opposition’s unitary candidate after the government banned María Corina Machado from running. Though “inabilitated,” as Venezuelans put it, this election continues to be a Maduro versus Machado match.

Venezuela has been leading the United States on, maintaining the pretense that they will ensure that the upcoming presidential elections are free and fair. That's despite the US relieving sanctions, releasing prisoners and months of “diplomacy.” The Nicolás Maduro regime has also gone on offense, threatening to take back the Esequibo, an area now under Guyana’s jurisdiction, where American oil companies have invested billions. This Wednesday, Maduro mocked the Biden administration once again, arresting two high-level officials from opposition candidate María Corina Machado’s team and issuing arrest warrants against several others.

Venezuelan presidential hopeful María Corina Machado had filed a claim in December, arguing to the country’s highest court, that a ban prohibiting her from holding office was unconstitutional. The verdict came last week — and the ban was upheld. As south Florida congresswoman María Elvira Salazar told The Spectator, the conclusions reached by the “Chavista-controlled” tribunal were “unfortunate but not surprising.” The upholding of the ban comes after months of negotiations, where the Biden administration eased sectoral sanctions in pursuit of a “path to democracy.” This approach riled up Florida Republicans, a state with a vast Venezuelan-American population.