Venezuela's Maduro: Marxist, Christian, iron-fisted 'superhero'

 

 Venezuelan President and presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro reacts following the presidential election results in Caracas on July 29, 2024. [AFP]

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, whose declared election victory Sunday the opposition rejects, has been written off many times during a turbulent decade in power.

But the former bus driver has stubbornly clung to the wheel.

With neither the charisma nor the flush oil revenues of his late revolutionary mentor Hugo Chavez, Maduro is accused by rights groups of relying on full-blown authoritarianism to hold on to power.

The CNE electoral body, in its majority loyal to his government, announced Sunday that Maduro had won 51.2 per cent of votes to 44.2 per cent for opposition rival Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

The opposition, however, challenged that outcome saying the incumbent had in fact garnered no more than 30 percent and Gonzalez Urrutia 70 percent.

Deeply unpopular after years of economic crisis, the 61-year-old Maduro sought a third six-year term in fraught elections overshadowed by his threats of a "bloodbath" if he lost.

Tall, with a full moustache and slicked-back greying hair, Maduro benefited from a wall-to-wall, state-sponsored propaganda drive, his image plastered on building facades, his voice booming from TV.

At the same time, he subjected the opposition to a relentless persecution campaign, critics say, with dozens of arrests, political disqualification of rivals and non-stop harassment.

Opinion polls had predicted a massive loss. It was not the first time Maduro was given up for lost.

He was first thrust into power as Chavez's handpicked successor despite misgivings within the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).

After Chavez died of cancer, Maduro won his first election in 2013 with a razor-thin margin.

Since then, he has fended off crisis after crisis, ruling with an iron fist and consolidating power as life for the average Venezuelan grew ever more miserable.

Millions of Venezuelans have fled a dire economic crisis marked by runaway inflation and critical shortages as an oil boom went bust partly due to a plunge in global crude prices.

Baseball and salsa

Born in Caracas, Maduro is a professed Marxist and Christian, and as a teenager played guitar in a rock band called Enigma.

He is a baseball fan and dances salsa -- frequently for the ever-present TV cameras -- with his wife Cilia Flores, a former prosecutor he refers to as "First Combatant."

Maduro tries to cast himself as a "worker president," and it has been claimed he deliberately misspeaks in English so as not to be mistaken for high-brow.

As a young man, Maduro became a union leader for workers on the Caracas metro and went to communist Cuba in the 1980s for a political education.

Elected to the National Assembly when Chavez swept to power, he served as speaker of the legislature before taking over as foreign minister in 2006 and then vice president until his mentor's death in 2013.

'At war with imperialism'

As president, Maduro has weathered many threats imagined and real -- including a failed explosive-laden drone attack in 2018 that injured several soldiers.

He successfully faced down sanctions after dozens of nations did not recognize his 2018 re-election, focusing on tightening control over the judiciary, legislature, military and state institutions.

The president has been aided by close political and economic ties with China, Russia and other autocratic international actors that have helped the country stay barely afloat.

To deflect blame for Venezuela's woes, Maduro has sustained Chavez's anti-American conspiracy theories, accusing the United States of plotting to kill him and Western nations of ruining the once-thriving economy.

All the while, he shuttered channels for political dissent, locking up dissidents and challengers with little regard for due process, observers say.

Venezuela is under investigation for rights violations by the International Criminal Court.

Even as the country spiraled, Maduro showed himself to be adept at realpolitik.

Last year, he won an easing of US sanctions and other concessions by agreeing with the opposition to hold elections this year.

But he reneged on the conditions and sanctions were snapped back in April, though Washington is allowing oil companies such as Chevron and Repsol to apply for individual licenses to keep operating in Venezuela.

To boost his omnipresent real-life persona, Maduro has sought to endear himself to a long-suffering population through a popular TV and internet cartoon character in his image.

Super-Bigote (Super Moustache) is a caped superhero "at war with imperialism."

The president has also adopted the emblem of a fighting cock, "Gallo Pinto," in a bid to highlight his sprightliness relative to 74-year-old opposition challenger Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.