Policy Brief - Venezuela at the crossroads: The presidential elections of

This is why the elections of July 281 hold a major importance in the political history of the country: for the first time since what is referred to as the Bolivarian revolution by Hugo Chávez, the opposition to the regime has a real chance of winning the elections and defeating the movement created by him over 30 years ago, and which has ruled that country since 1998. [...] The resistance of the more traditional and conservative parties of the pact to communism, combined with the Cold War and the traditional close relations Venezuela used to have with the US made the participation of the communist party to the pact virtually impossible. [...] Maduro and the opposition leaders, and indicated to the former the strong mobilization of the supporters of the latter. [...] However, with the significant changes in the international scene between the first decade of the century and the current one -the rise of China, the change in Russia’s relationship with the West, not to mention the increasing assertiveness of Iran- have provided Mr. [...] Maduro and protect it -since most military leaders owe their appointment to it- or will it be sensitive to international pressure and to the harm to the image of the country that supporting a regime that would have lost elections might represent? To this respect, the wider the eventual margin of victory of the opposition will be, the more reduced the margin of contestation of the electoral result.