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BOGOTA.– Nicolás Maduro needs a miracle to legally win the presidential elections on July 28. And he looks for it everywhere. “They put up a platform in Trujillo and there were 20,000 people there. A photo shows something impressive: a light on the stage and an image that tells us that José Gregorio Hernández (the ‘doctor of the poor’, declared blessed by the Vatican) blesses us and protects us. He is with us,” the “people president” recounted with emotion, while Chavista television showed the photograph of that “miraculous” light.
The most metaphysical Maduro not only transformed a few hundred people into a massive audience with his revolutionary wand. He also sought another miracle from José Gregorio, a very popular religious icon, prayed in many Venezuelan homes for health and well-being. Something similar to the “spiritual” event in the 2013 campaign, when he felt the presence of Hugo Chávez in bird formatcame to him to confirm that he was the chosen one.
Eleven years later, the “conductor of victories” faces an impossible campaign, with a country destroyed by the revolutionary failure and with an open wound due to the flight of almost nine million Venezuelans. This is confirmed by the latest Hercón Consultores survey: he opposition candidateEdmundo González Urrutia, maintains an advantage of 67.3% compared to the 23.5% that the president garners.
What is Chavismo’s recipe to face such an uphill climb? A mix of miracles, karaoke and fake news with the State’s millionaire wallet in the midst of the communication hegemony imposed by the revolution. And with a strange strategy that until now has only achieved a certain amount of national criticism: acting in the slipstream of the “freedom campaign” undertaken by the opposition leader, Maria Corina Machadowhich travels through the country as if it were an emotional hurricane.
And miracles of all faiths, because thanks to his alliance with the evangelical pastors, who is cared for by his son Nicolasito Maduro, he appears as protector of the family by the work and word of the Bible.
“Maduro is presenting himself as a man of faith, defender of the values of the Venezuelan ‘traditional family’, enemy of Western culture, like Putin, Ortega or Xi Jinping. He has also used government resources to recover religious temples and has attempted to sell the idea that it was his efforts before the Pope that led to the imminent canonization, not yet confirmed, of Blessed Hernández, a saint who performs medical miracles in a country crossed by one of the biggest humanitarian crises. Using the blessed in the campaign was predictable, especially in a dictator with a deep vocation for cabalas, metaphysical signs, magical rituals, evidence of a predestined destiny that forces him to be president for the salvation of all Venezuelans,” he describes. LA NACION the sociologist Gianni Finco.
The “son of Chávez” has bordered on the grotesque in search of the impossible. There are countless videos that show how Chavismo forces images of small groups of people to the maximum to look like crowds. Or how Maduro simulates states of euphoria in the face of the non-existent fervor of a few dozen people brought to the place. His most popular moment was on Waikiki beach because the president showed up unannounced at a reggaeton concert organized with public money by Rafael Lacava, a governor who believes he is an ersatz Batman.
“One day he runs in the rain with his troop, another day he becomes a podcaster or DJ, he dances, sings, simulates pirouettes on a motorcycle and makes jokes using youthful language that he handles clumsily. His attempt to connect with what he believes is popular distances him more and more from his people”Finco confirms.
Another day, Maduro, almost in ecstasy, launched himself into a supposed audience as if it were Bruce Springsteen at a rock concert. With evident efforts they moved his robust body, but the evidence gave them away: they were his escorts.
In his podcast, the most endearing Maduro remembers battles from the last century, while on a reality TV show he was looking for the perfect song for his campaign. The television programs on Mondays were also joined by the radio broadcasts on Tuesdays and the exacerbated media advantage every day and with constant public waste.
“I have never seen a campaign that only garners rejection like this one from Maduro. He has always been a terrible candidate, but what we are seeing is unprecedented“Andrés Izarra, a former Chavista minister exiled in Europe today, who was very close to Hugo Chávez, criticized on his social networks.
The former allies of Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV)from whom the Supreme Court seized the party to hand it over to Chavista leaders and thus support Maduro, summed it up in three words: circus without bread.
“Chavismo has a focus on the most extreme ages, that is, on the oldest and on the youngest. The first because they are the ones most dependent on social control, and the second because they are the ones with the least information about all the atrocities they have committed for 25 years,” political scientist Walter Molina Galdi explains to LA NACION.
Independent surveys, compared to fake surveys from unknown companies, confirm that the strategy does not work. “They believed that by making one or another video go viral they would be able to clean up their image. And it happened the other way around: Edmundo became more popular in a month since people began to know that he existed against Maduro, with all his communication megamachinery.“, says Molina.
