It has been five years since there was a presidential election in Venezuela. Now with an opposition-organized primary coming this October, socialist dictator Nicolas Maduro is doing everything he can to remove the competition. Three weeks ago he announced that leading opposition figure Maria Corina Machado was ineligible to run for office.

Machado, a 55-year-old industrial engineer and former lawmaker, is leading polling for the 13-candidate primary, convened to select a unity candidate to face socialist President Nicolas Maduro in a 2024 election…

Machado has been barred from leaving Venezuela for the last nine years and had been banned from office for 12 months in 2015 because, according to the controller, she did not include some benefits received when she was a lawmaker in her assets declaration. Machado says she never received the benefits.

Venezuelan lawmaker Jose Brito, who serves in the ruling party-controlled national assembly, asked the controller this week to clarify Machado’s status.

“The citizen Maria Corina Machado Parisca … is disqualified from the exercise of any public office for the period of 15 years,” the controller said in its response, dated June 27 and shared by Brito on Friday.

In an interview with the Washington Post, Machado called the disqualification “irrelevant.” Because the primary is happening outside the control of the government, they can’t stop her. However, it does mean that, even if she wins, the government could refuse to allow her to compete in an actual election. Her plan is to create enough of a groundswell that Maduro can’t ignore it.

…she said, she will aim to build so much support among Venezuelans that Maduro is forced to let her enter the presidential race.

“We will fight, and we will create force,” she said. “The candidate is chosen by the people, not by Maduro.”…

So far, Maduro shows no sign of even trying to make the election look free and fair. Of the 14 candidates running in the October primary, at least three have been disqualified by his government so far, including two leading politicians, Machado and opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Maduro has dismantled the national electoral council and failed to carry out recommendations from a 2021 European Union monitoring mission. The pro-Maduro president of the National Assembly last week said that an E.U. observation mission should not be allowed to enter the country. A lawsuit seeking to block the primary is also advancing to the Maduro-aligned Supreme Court.

Whether it’s because he feels threatened or emboldened, Maduro appears to be taking the country down the path of Nicaraguan authoritian leader Daniel Ortega, who claimed in 2021 that he’d won another five-year term — after jailing dozens of opponents — in an election dismissed by many world leaders as a sham.

The idea that the candidate is chosen by the people not by Maduro sounds right. The problem is that under the current corrupt system, Maduro literally can choose the candidate or at least rule out all of the popular ones. The people haven’t been in charge of Venezuela for more than a decade.

David Smilde, a Venezuela analyst from Tulane University, wasn’t optimistic. “I think the whole idea of an electoral solution to this is not looking good,” he said. The problem is that the current leadership knows that if they are somehow driven from power, they will likely wind up in prison in one place or another. So the only option is to remain in power at all costs.

Speaking of prison, Venezuela’s former spy chief (nickname “the chicken”) is currently being tried in New York on charges of drug trafficking.

Hugo Carvajal, 63, was extradited from Spain on Wednesday after an over-ten year effort by prosecutors to bring him to the US to face the charges.

Mr Carvajal, who was a confidante to late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has denied that he was ever involved in the illicit drug trade.

US prosecutors say he shipped tonnes of cocaine to Mexico to be sent to the US.

Prosecutors allege he used his position in government to ship approximately 5,600kg (12,300lbs) from Venezuela to Mexico to be sent on to the US.

Drugs are about the only thing Venezuela exports besides oil. Hopefully, Carvajal will be convicted but if so that will only further convince Maduro and his cronies not to relinquish power. My guess is that Maduro will find a way to remain in power until he dies in office, thereby ensuring that the socialist nightmare Venezuela is living through outlasts him.