Desperate to masks the blights on his years in energy, Maduro has adopted new marketing campaign methods to woo voters.
He joined the video platform TikTok in 2020 and has since amassed greater than 2.2 million followers. On Instagram Stay broadcasts, he exhibits off his rallies, the place he has sung, danced and prayed along with his supporters.
Scrolling by movies on his cellphone, mototaxi driver Alfred Rajoy speaks animatedly about how he attended one of many latest rallies.
He instructed Al Jazeera he was proud to be one of many motorcyclists who acquired near the president.
Rajoy’s windbreaker jacket testifies to his devotion to the Chavismo motion: The faces of Maduro and Chavez are printed on the entrance, one on both facet of the zipper.
However he acknowledges that Maduro’s authorities has confronted criticism over corruption and its human rights report.
“It’s no secret that we have now had failures right here, excessive failures. There’s some discontent in our communities, all through the nation. Some individuals near Nicolas Maduro have accomplished incorrect,” Rajoy stated.
He additionally expressed a level of discomfort with authorities actions designed to dismantle and discourage the opposition. Dozens of opposition members have been detained within the lead-up to Sunday’s race, and eating places and lodges that hosted Gonzalez, the rival presidential candidate, have been shut down.
However some supporters dismiss such tales as misinformation — or, worse, fabrications from the opposition and international brokers.
Guillermo Avila, 24, a Maduro supporter, stated he believes lots of the criticisms he sees on-line are the product of opposition manipulation.
“They painting our authorities as a totalitarian and dictatorial one, however truly, it’s a participatory and essential authorities,” Avila stated. “It presents an area for everybody. We’re seeing the nation rising economically, the place individuals look comfortable within the streets.”
However for Gunson, Maduro’s “man of the individuals” narrative doesn’t maintain up in opposition to his monitor report of alleged abuses.
“Maduro kinds himself the employee, as a result of he did not go to school and he was a bus driver,” Gunson stated. “However it is a authorities that jails commerce union leaders for protesting. These are individuals who have grown wealthy exploiting the poor, and so they declare to be socialists. Contradiction is of their center title.”
Because of Maduro’s status for tamping down dissent, many opposition voters are involved the president and his supporters will not respect a Gonzalez win.
From his lounge armchair, Bermudez watches Maduro’s campaigns on his small tv set. For him, Maduro shedding is inconceivable. The prospect even introduced tears to his eyes: “The lack of the election could be the lack of the nation, the destruction of Venezuela.”
Different Maduro supporters, nonetheless, are much less fatalistic about the potential of an finish to almost 25 years of socialist rule.
“This can be a democracy,” stated Rajoy. “A very powerful factor is that folks vote — and that the result’s revered.”
Each males are eagerly awaiting the outcomes on election day, which, not coincidentally, falls on the late Chavez’s birthday.
