Maria Machado Update

Earlier this year, I posted "Coward Maduro Bans 80-Year-Old Opponent," ending as follows:

Sadly for Venezuela, the Maduro regime, scared of this kind, elderly lady and the optimistic, sunny view of the world she represents, has, predictably, blocked her election bid, like the cowards that they are.

Back then, I opined that said candidate, Corina Yoris, was someone I could support, which should tell you something.

Yoris was running as the standard-bearer of a ten-party coalition hoping to unseat the Maduro regime, and so I reckoned on yet another rubber-stamp election with no serious opposition.

Fortunately, I was wrong. One Edmundo Gonzalez, a little-known septuagenarian diplomat, was permitted to run as the opposition candidate, replacing Yoris, who, as far as I can tell, had been the (original) stand-in for Maria Machado -- the "real" candidate -- who herself had been banned from running by the nation's court of "justice."

According to DNyuz, Gonzalez is doing quite well in the polls on the strength of Machado's barnstorming:

Machado (Image by SantanaZ, via Wikimedia Commons, license.)

... Machado, a conservative former member of the national assembly once rejected by her own colleagues, has not only corralled Venezuela's fractious opposition behind her, but has also captivated a broad swath of the electorate with a promise for sweeping government change.

...

That morning, Ms. Machado's security adviser was the latest in a string of campaign members to be arrested by the government. To evade authorities, the opposition leader sped out of Caracas before dawn, her car windows still bearing the cracks from rock-throwing Maduro supporters.

By late afternoon, she had climbed onto her car's roof in Guanare, wearing pearl earrings and a ponytail.

The cries of support reached a fever pitch. At her side, a man without shoes asked how he could help protect her.

The ongoing campaign of official harassment bodes ill for the regime honoring an unfavorable result, but stranger things have happened.

Is Machado's ability to go about as she does a sign that the regime fears outright rebellion if they do anything too thuggish about her now? If that's the case, perhaps Venezuela's national nightmare will come to an end in the near future.

-- CAV