In the video, which is approximately one minute long, Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores can be seen sitting in what appears to be the living room of a home, talking with members of a family in the La Vega sector of Caracas.
Maduro claims that if he loses the elections, “a civil war would break out… an armed popular revolution of the people. The people would carry out an armed popular revolution.”
He added: “I haven’t said it, but the day we lost the elections in 2015, I prevented an armed revolution, because the people wanted to take to the streets. I prevented it and called for peace, and then I tried to work and prevent a civil war here.”
And he added: “Because if we tell the people, the armed forces and the police forces to go out into the streets, then there will be a revolution, like in the 20th century, popular and armed. It will be another revolution. And it will be, it would be, inevitable if the fascist right comes to power,” he said..
In the parliamentary elections of December 2015, the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), a coalition of parties, won a qualified majority in the National Assembly by obtaining 107 seats out of a total of 167, compared to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which won 55 deputies.
After those elections, which were a milestone in the decline of Chavismo in Venezuela, Maduro accepted the results, although he attributed the opposition victory to the “economic war” that he says has been waged against his regime by his “enemies” and called on the government to “close ranks” to continue consolidating the so-called “21st century socialism.” Chavismo continually attributes the cause of Venezuela’s problems to factors external to the regime. Thus, he has blamed the United States and its allies for being responsible for everything from conspiracies to remove him from power or assassinate him to sabotage of public services or rising prices.
Constant threats
The leak of the video on Thursday is not an isolated incident. On Wednesday, during a campaign speech in a working-class area of Caracas, Maduro threatened a “bloodbath” in the Caribbean country if he is not re-elected as president.
“The fate of Venezuela in the 21st century depends on our victory on July 28. If we do not want Venezuela to fall into a bloodbath, into a fratricidal civil war, the product of the fascists, let us guarantee the greatest success,” he said in a message televised on the state channel.
It was a veiled threat just ten days before the elections, in which everything seems to indicate that the opposition is capable of removing Chavismo from power after 25 years.
The Venezuelan leader also said that “the more resounding the victory, the more guarantees of peace we will have. The more resounding the votes, the more guarantees of future we will offer to these girls and boys.”
Virtually all opinion polls suggest that Edmundo González Urrutia, the candidate of the main opposition coalition, will beat Maduro by a wide margin. Maduro is seeking a third term until 2030.
“The numbers we are seeing in the polls this year are totally different from those of 2013 and 2018 (years in which there were previous presidential elections), first because of the advantage between Nicolás Maduro and Edmundo G. Fonzález, 12 percentage points, only among voters who have a high probability of voting,” explained journalist Eugenio Martínez in an interview for a television program.
Martinez added that if voters with a “high, medium and moderate probability of voting” are taken into account, the difference in favor of Gonzalez could increase to 20%.
Opposition leader María Corina Machado, who was theoretically the opposition candidate after winning the primaries last October with 92% of the vote but who was not allowed to run by the regime after being banned from holding public office, has been touring Venezuela for months campaigning for González. News reports of mass gatherings in all the regions of the South American country that she has visited are now common.
Martínez stressed that, in addition to the polls, one of the factors that is marking the path of this campaign in Venezuela is the perception of victory among the population that supports Machado and González.
“The most important thing is the perception of triumph that the electorate has regarding Edmundo González’s candidacy; that did not exist in 2013 and much less in 2018,” he said.
Last Saturday, Maduro raised the possibility of an insurrection by the armed forces, considered his main support and which he called “deeply Chavista,” in the event of an opposition victory on July 28.
When discussing possible scenarios for the elections, Maduro mentioned the possibility of a military uprising if the opposition wins, while denouncing an alleged plan to “erase” Chavismo.
Maria Corina Machado assassination
On Thursday, Machado denounced an “attack” against her. In a video on her social media, the opposition leader claimed that the vehicles in which she was traveling to Caracas were sabotaged after one of them had its engine oil drained and another had its brake cables cut.
The video showed the state in which the two vehicles were left, which were also sprayed with white paint. “It is clearly an attack,” said the opposition leader.
She added that “agents of Maduro’s regime” pursued the convoy in which she was traveling and “surrounded” the house where she and her team were staying in the city of Barquisimeto, in the northwest of the country.
“Maduro’s campaign is violence and is responsible for any damage to our physical integrity. They will not stop us,” said Machado, who recalls that this incident occurred just one day after the arrest of his security chief, Milciades Ávila, by the regime, whom he holds responsible for his physical safety and that of another twenty people on his team who have been arrested since July 4 when the electoral campaign began.
Source: EDITORIAL / With information from AP / Europa Press
