Grandfather and the Iron Lady

By Roberto Morejón

With the approach of the presidential elections in Venezuela, the intensity of the anti-Bolivarian Revolution messages in the corporate press increased.

The candidate for re-election, Nicolás Maduro, and his campaign command underlined the existence of a media offensive against the July 28 elections.

The president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amorós, alluded to media insults, some of which are of a private nature at the national level, although it is the international ones that carry the weight.

Maduro referred to what he described as "hired assassins of lies" in search of tarnishing the process in the elections.

Ten candidates will be presented to them, although the most talked about is the current head of state and representative of the ultra-right Democratic Unity Platform, Edmundo González. 

The intention to present the latter as a venerable old man was obvious, to the point that some media referred to him as the "grandfather of democracy," although they had to admit that he was in the shadow of the ultra-radical right-winger María Corina Machado, a favorite of the United States.

This citizen, who was disqualified from running for office for acts of corruption during the ghost government of Juan Guaidó, has a long history of destabilization.

The real power behind the former diplomat Edmundo González is the so-called "Iron Lady" of Venezuela, described in the Western press as "successful" and able to rally crowds.

The Venezuelan government has denounced the far-right opposition as being linked to plans and conspiracies to destroy figures of Chavismo and the Bolivarian Revolution.

Machado, who in 2005 was portrayed in the halls of the White House with the first U.S. president George W. Bush, one of the most hostile to Caracas, was in 2014 behind the so-called guarimbas, acts of vandalism to overthrow the constitutional order.

Little is said about the government plan, if any, of the duet Edmundo Gonzalez-Maria Corina Machado, so as not to frighten the electorate.

Fierce thinning of the State, privatization of the oil industry, reduction of public administration jobs and a detachment from the struggle for sovereignty, mark the aspirations of the ultra-conservatives.

Against them, the program of the Great Patriotic Pole, to which the United Socialist Party of Venezuela belongs, emerges, guaranteeing stability and peace and continuing to work to attenuate the brutal impact of the US sanctions.