On July 28, 2024, something will change in Venezuela; it is defined and practically nothing can prevent it.

Detailing what will change is impossible at this time. However, ten months ago the situation was one of apparent greater certainty. The idea was that the dictator Nicolás Maduro would easily perpetuate himself in an election not recognized by anyone, but that no one would have the firepower to counteract. He would achieve an overwhelming percentage of votes (but with very low participation) against a handful of unknown and dull testimonial candidates tasked with submissively picking up the crumbs left behind.

If someone at that moment had said that today, less than a week before voting day, it is not known who will be the president of Venezuela, they would have been taken either as a veiled supporter of Maduro or as a fool.

Venezuela is preparing for an election that, with the political force built by Maria Corina Machado and the presence of a legalized candidacy before the electoral authority (such as that of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia) has completely turned the Venezuelan political board upside down.

Maduro went from being almost unbeatable to any remotely reliable opinion poll predicting his removal from power by a landslide. Today no one in Venezuela doubts that the only uncertainty weighing on the election is the authoritarian nature of the regime. If the election was held with guaranteed transparency, the victory of Edmundo Gonzalez would be taken for granted.

Ultimately, what is about to happen in Venezuela is, by all accounts, is a demonstration that it is possible to oust an authoritarian government through the vote. Today, the only way Maduro can save himself would be if many Venezuelans —moved by the discouraging propaganda both of his Socialist Party’s campaign that seeks to show itself as omnipotent and of marginal sectors of the extremist opposition who (comfortable from exile) tweet that “in a dictatorship you do not vote”— decide that the best way to topple the regime is to sit in their armchairs with their arms crossed and maybe tweet until the voting hour passes, waiting for a US armed intervention that will never come, no matter who occupies the White House.

How is it possible that under a regime that has hundreds of political prisoners, eight million exiles, the state media at its full disposal, and the few private ones in complete silence, and that is known for having tortured people and shot at peaceful protesters, that such an event is being celebrated if historically we have been taught that in a dictatorship you do not vote or you vote, but you do not choose?

In principle, Venezuela is voting, but not choosing. Not because it is guaranteed that the Maduro regime will control the process, but because Venezuelans will have to choose between a candidate who commits to respecting their minimum civic guarantees and another who (in power) does not. There will be no genuine democracy in Venezuela until Venezuelans can vote for what they want (and even be staunch opponents of an eventual Gonzalez or María Corina Machado government) without it representing arbitrary harm or any risk to them. Indeed, Venezuela will vote, but if it chooses, it will be later.

Then there is the fact that yes, in fact, Nicolas Maduro will face a viable alternative candidate backed by the majority of the opposition’s major parties, but it does not mean that the elections will be clean. To a politicized electoral authority, countless opposition parties judicially intervened, ballot confusion, the disqualification of leaders, and the restrictions of international and national observation, the repressive escalation that the regime has incurred in the last two weeks is added, anything can be expected. So far, there have been 102 people arbitrarily detained since the process began; 77 of the detentions have taken place since the campaign officially opened on July 4, 2024.

The majority opposition boycotted several elections from 2017 onwards and alleged various irregularities. This particular election is not boycotted. That’s what makes it different, besides the candidacy of Edmundo Gonzalez?

Nicolas Maduro has not changed. Neither he nor his regime nor the electoral authority. What has changed forever is Venezuelan civil society.

Since the emergence of Maria Corina Machado’s leadership and the birth of a new hope for change through electoral means, Venezuelan civil society is in full bloom and becoming much braver as the days go by. Machado’s team has formed organized groups around the country that aspire to defend the vote of the Unity Platform on July 28, 2024. They will publish a parallel count that reflects the true results in case the National Electoral Council (CNE) bulletin alters them. Another sign is the massive support and participation in the huge rallies that Machado has convened in her long journey through Venezuelan territory.

Today we see that Venezuelans who had not voted for 20 years have registered and are willing to do so, and Venezuelans who had not had the slightest expectation of seeing a change in their country in the long term for ten years are today confident, as if their life depended on it, that this July 28 they will see Maduro defeated.

When people believe something is possible, that something ends up becoming reality, even by its own force. The election, the vote itself, acts as an inflection point. We will see what mutation the revitalization of Venezuelan civil society takes.

There will be voices saying that we have had hope with Venezuela before —both through electoral and insurrectional means— and in the end, nothing ever happens. But history is not a circle, it does not repeat itself. Each scenario was different and failed for very different reasons, and the current scenario is different as well.

One scenario is a contested result in a very tight election (with Chavismo still strong after the death of its founder, Hugo Chavez) whose real figures cannot be demonstrated (as in 2013). Another is a parliamentary election that does not define the executive (as in 2015). Another is taking to the streets violently, but only due to an outburst of necessity and without clear leadership (as in 2017). Another is trying to swear in an interim president (which gives you clear leadership) but with the streets asleep and weakened (as in 2019). Finally, another scenario is having the overwhelming evidence of a photo showing a candidate supported by the majority of opposition parties receiving more votes than Nicolas Maduro.

Starting from the fact that, this July 28, through observers, we will see a photograph of Nicolas Maduro receiving fewer votes than another candidate. Any sabotage of the process that Chavismo may incur—from disqualifying Edmundo Gonzalez from taking office, annulling the result, launching a massive electoral fraud, or unleashing repressive violence—will be met with an increasingly high political cost.

Internationally, we see it with Lula’s recent reactions. He criticized Maduro’s campaign speech and reminds him: “if you win, you stay, and if you lose, you go.” Lula, whom we know for being a close ally of Chavismo, Castro’s Cuba, and Nicaragua’s Ortega, would not say what he says if he were not certain that from July 28 he will have to either deal with Edmundo Gonzalez or face a civil war on his border. It is not very difficult to assume which scenario is preferable for the leader of South America’s regional power.

If Edmundo Gonzalez wins, the scenario of the transition then opens up. What can happen? Many ask. How is it possible that a regime accused and even with arrest warrants from the United States peacefully hands over power?

They will not peacefully hand it over. They sabotaged the opposition primaries, sabotaged the opposition campaign, have sabotaged the administration of the process, and there is no doubt that even in a scenario where Maduro has to admit an electoral defeat, they will do everything possible to sabotage the transition. In 2016, the National Assembly was dominated by the opposition—which controlled two-thirds of the seats —and could not remove Maduro. What is the difference?

Today the scenario would be the opposite; Edmundo Gonzalez would have to preside over Venezuela with Chavismo controlling all other levers of power in the country (the legislature, the judiciary, the governorships, the mayoralties, and the security forces). In this context, Chavismo will know from the beginning that it still has firepower to make demands, to get the best slice possible from a transition.

Leaving power has its costs for Chavismo. Assuming such an inevitable scenario, they will have to choose how to leave it. A peaceful electoral transition in which they still have (quoting María Corina Machado) “until the end” the frying pan by the handle, appears for now as the most favorable option for them.

Even if ultimately, it is not the July 28 election that ends up precipitating the (today seemingly inevitable) transition in Venezuela, the process will have been the main means employed by the opposition to achieve that end. Nicolas Maduro has rested for years on the shoulders of his people’s apathy. When he had the opportunity to annul the periodic pluralistic electoral ritual through the 2017 constituent assembly and follow Cuba’s path definitively, he did not do so, confident that his people would not vote in any election in which he competed in power. It is not true that voting legitimized him. He did not need legitimacy, he did not need it for the last six years he did not have it, and he would not need it for another six more if María Corina Machado had decided to abstain.

Dictatorships, authoritarianisms of all kinds, will continue to hold elections. In the vast majority of cases, they will prefer that opponents stay at home, angry, tweeting that in a dictatorship you do not vote.

This article was translated into English from the original in Spanish.