Maduro travels through Venezuela to show that US sanctions suffocate the country, Vijay Prashad says

Brasil de Fato

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s main challenge for reelection on Sunday (28) is to show the majority of the population that US sanctions are the root of the country’s problems. That’s the opinion of Vijay Pashad, a Marxist historian and researcher at the Tricontinental – Institute for Social Research.

“This is a very important election. All processes like this generate contradictions. Venezuela is being suffocated, strangled by the United States, which creates problems for [the Venezuelan] people. I think he [Maduro] has done an excellent job of traveling through the country, making rallies, speeches, walking among the people, trying to explain to them that they have to unite against the attack on Venezuela,” Prashad told Brasil de Fato.

On the eve of the election, voters have no thermometer to help them know which candidate has the best chance of winning. With very different results, experts believe a technical tie is possible even at this point.

The figures don’t seem reliable. Today, some institutes put the opposition candidate and former ambassador Edmundo González Urrutia up to 30 percentage points ahead of President Nicolás Maduro, who is seeking reelection. Others indicate Maduro’s victory by the same margin of 30 percentage points over the Unity Platform candidate. These polls were conducted by Delphos and Hinterlaces, respectively.

Despite this scenario, Prashad is confident of Maduro’s reelection: “The opposition has a really terrible right-wing candidate. It’s unlikely – even if they call him “grandpa” – that he will win. On July 28, the socialists are going to win, and we’ll see what they can do to end the sanctions and the US government blockade.”