VENEZUELA’S election this weekend takes place in a context dominated by Venezuela’s robust economic recovery, which, considering the calamitous situation the country found itself as late as the end of 2020, the 1 per cent rate of inflation June this year and an expected rate of growth for 2024 of between 5 to 8 per cent, is near miraculous. 

This is despite the application of 930 unilateral coercive measures (aka “sanctions”) that caused havoc in the period 2015-23. A confirmation of this recovery is the return of nearly a million Venezuelans who were persuaded with false promises and as part of psychological campaign of fear to leave the country during the worst moments of the effects of the aggressive and brutal US sanctions against this South American nation.

Additionally, the high and enthusiastic levels of mass mobilisation of pro-Maduro forces contrasts sharply with the rather weak rallies of opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, supported and literally handled by extreme right-wing politician, Maria Corina Machado, with people being bussed around the cities where they have been held.