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The opposition leader Juan Guaidó plays his last card to stay afloat on the political scene in Venezuela with the call for a symbolic consultation, with which he hopes that a disappointed opposition will return to the streets to express their discontent against President Nicolás Maduro.
With less popularity than he enjoyed when he was proclaimed president in charge of Venezuela in January 2019, Guaidó, recognized as interim president by fifty countries, led by the United States, encourages participation in the independent consultation, which started in virtual channels on Monday and in person this Saturday.
“I have already raised my voice for Venezuela and participated in the #PopularConsult. Venezuelans are on the street today expressing our will to fight to change our country. Raise your voice! #HoyTodosALaConsultaPopular,” he wrote on Twitter.
In the so-called “popular consultation” Venezuelans are asked if they support “all mechanisms of national and international pressure” in favor of “free presidential and parliamentary elections” and if they reject the legislative elections on Sunday in which Chavismo won 255 of the 277 seats, amid a boycott by the bulk of the opposition parties led by Guaidó.
The organizers asked those who expressed themselves “virtually” to also accompany them on the street at the more than 3,000 points arranged in the country.
“We ask you optionally, but we almost ask you with clamor, that you attend those places so that you can see” in the world, said Enrique Colmenares Finol, president of the High Citizen Council for the consultation during a press conference this Saturday.
It is not the first time that the opposition has invited a consultation process.
A similar initiative took place in July 2017 in rejection of the Constituent Assembly called by Maduro, after months of protests that left some 125 dead. Despite the rejection that the opposition capitalized on in that symbolic plebiscite, the 100% Chavista body was installed in August of that year, assuming legislative functions in practice.
Then, the opposition said it had gathered 7.6 million votes in repudiation of the ruling body, which ceases functions this year to make way for a new National Assembly controlled by Chavismo on January 5. The majority of the deputies elected on December 6, in the elections that the opposition called “fraud”, were part of the Constituent Assembly.
Skepticism
The opposition denounced sources of “intimidation” in some areas. “They are armed civilian groups called collectives used by the regime (…) At Cota 905 (Caracas) they had to withdraw the consultation point due to intimidation,” Deputy Rafael Veloz told AFP.
“The communal councils came out to run us,” said Deputy Jesús Abreu, for his part, from Catia, a popular area in the west of the capital where collective groups operate, which, he said, “roamed” early to intimidate them.
On the other side of the capital, José Nelson Castellanos, 56, approached a plaza in Chacao, an affluent traditionally oppositional area of Caracas, to express his rejection of the Maduro government.
“If we are not satisfied with the situation we have in the country, we must do something, I know that many people are not even stopping this type of thing anymore because they are already skeptical about the results, but something must be done,” he declared to AFP.
An “illusion” of the opposition
The consultation is also affected by a “tremendous lack of information, there is a lot of confusion about how to vote,” Benigno Alarcón, director of the Center for Political and Government Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas, told AFP.
Faced with the hegemony exercised by the government over traditional media, the opposition has to resort to social networks to spread its messages, something that is complicated by internet failures and frequent power cuts.
Ignacio Ávalos, director of the Venezuelan Electoral Observatory, told AFP that the opposition has “a certain illusion with the consultation.”
But, as he observes, “the certification mechanisms (in the consultation) do not exist” and “more than a value as a vote, with the consultation they are trying to generate a political fact with mobilization”.
Maduro, meanwhile, downplays the call of Guaidó, whom he calls a “phony” and a “puppet” of the United States.
“No one could think that an online consultation has legal and constitutional value, it only has informational value,” said the president on Thursday during an act with the elected deputies, without expressly naming the opposition leader.
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