CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is omnipresent in the run-up to Sunday’s elections: shaking his fist on state TV, smiling on the facades of Caracas’ buildings and beaming into the night sky of Maracaibo.
Unrestricted access to state media and funding for propaganda has allowed for constant appearances on television, radio, murals, toll booth signs, and even ambulances.
The opposition, by contrast, has been virtually absent from traditional campaign platforms in a political climate widely denounced as authoritarian. Yet polls show the opposition is leaving Maduro in the dust.
It's not that I didn't try.
A well-oiled propaganda machine has worked 24/7 to paint the 61-year-old as a strong, anti-imperialist, but also caring and sociable man.
Maduro is shown railing against capitalist “fascists,” dancing salsa with his wife and promising prosperity after years of economic crisis that have forced more than seven million Venezuelans, nearly a quarter of the population, to flee.
“There is a saturation that allows it to survive in people's minds,” Leon Hernandez of the Andres Bello Catholic University's Institute for Information and Communication Research told AFP.
And, importantly, to remind them that he is the heir to the late socialist icon Hugo Chavez. Unlike Maduro, he remains wildly popular and is hailed by many as a revolutionary hero.
In the absence of independent television channels, images of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia do not reach people's living rooms.
The opposition, on the other hand, communicates on YouTube and TikTok, a space it must also share with Maduro's 24-hour propaganda machine.
The president, who is seeking a third six-year term at the helm, attacks his people in numerous daily broadcasts of his electoral “pilgrimage” to Venezuela.
He is also the subject of a film recently presented in a theater in Caracas, based on a book about his life.
To strengthen his real-life presence, Maduro even has a cartoon character in his image: a hooded hero called Super-Bigote (Super Moustache) who fights monsters sent by the United States.
And he recently adopted the emblem of a fighting cock with yellow, blue and red feathers, the colors of Venezuela, which aims to emphasize his vivacity compared to the calm Gonzalez Urrutia, 74.
During Maduro's live campaign events, cockcrows can be heard, while campaign songs glorify the boxer.
The rooster also starred, alongside Maduro's face, in a drone light show over Maracaibo, once the epicenter of the state's oil wealth but now grappling with a constant fuel shortage, among other ills.
On the other hand, there has been little space for opposition voices in the independent media.
More than 400 private newspapers, radio and television stations have closed their doors in more than two decades of Chavista rule, a social movement named after Chavez.
Others were bought by entrepreneurs close to the regime. Even more have opted for self-censorship to continue to operate semi-independently.
By government order, foreign television networks such as CNN Spanish and Deutsche Welle (DW) have been suspended by cable providers.
On platforms like YouTube, from which it is not possible to ban opposition, the attack has been relentless.
The videos accuse Gonzalez Urrutia, the replacement for the hugely popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was barred from the race by institutions loyal to Maduro, of fomenting conspiracies and wanting to “give” Venezuelan oil to the United States.
In a country where the electoral authority is aligned with the regime, there are no posters featuring Gonzalez Urrutia's face and few that allude to the opposition.
During the campaign, which will officially end on Thursday, Gonzalez Urrutia has managed to obtain only a handful of interviews in the national media, conducted in a climate of severe regime control and self-censorship.
Disinformation is also a popular tool.
Military officials recently released a video of a speech given by Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia in front of a screen listing proposals to privatize the state oil company PDVSA and the education system.
AFP has determined that the video had been doctored and that the screen was blank.
