A quiet, bird-loving grandfather takes on Venezuela’s strongman Maduro this summer

Restraint is a rare quality for a politician, especially in Venezuela, a country whose recent leaders have been synonymous with vitriolic populism.

Hugo Chavez, the late president who still casts a formidable shadow across the country more than ten years after his death, used to speak for hours on his television show, Hello President!, while his firebrand successor, incumbent President Nicolas Maduro, is equally capable of clocking 60-plus minutes of uninterrupted oratory when the mood takes him.

So it’s telling that the man tasked with challenging Maduro in Venezuela’s presidential election next month is a man of few words.

Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the official candidate of a large opposition coalition known as the Democratic Unitary Platform, has a habit of answering his questions in single sentences, often stopping before the interviewer has the time to think of a follow-up.

It’s an unexpected approach from a presidential candidate aiming to drum up voter enthusiasm in order to take on an authoritarian leader who in the last ten years has dug into power by allegedly rigging elections and violating human rights. But Gonzalez is not your typical Venezuelan politician.

After decades in the foreign service (he was an ambassador to Algeria and Argentina) and then as a back bench manager for Venezuela’s opposition, Gonzalez was only selected as a coalition candidate because two other opposition leaders – Maria Corina Machado and Corina Yoris – had been barred from running and a deadline was looming.

“I never imagined I would find myself in this situation,” he told Venezuelan media in late April, shortly after his candidature was formalized. Yet since then, his poise and calm have helped him build a comfortable lead against Maduro, according to recent polls.

Opposition, a dangerous business

Challenging Maduro’s near total grip on power can be a dangerous business. Over the years, he has jailed or exiled dozens of opposition leaders, some of them for years. And hundreds of people have been killed in political violence in Venezuela in the past decade, often at the hands of state security forces.

But most analysts agree Gonzalez represents the best chance that Venezuela’s political opposition has had to dislodge Maduro from power since 2013. His name is already on the ballot for the July 28 presidential vote, and the government has so far shown little appetite for going after him.

In October, the Maduro government and the opposition, along with representatives from the United States, signed a comprehensive agreement in Barbados where Maduro pledged to hold free and fair elections in exchange for sanctions relief from Washington.

Since then, there have been mixed signals on both sides about the extent of the deal: US-imposed oil sanctions have only partially been lifted and most of Maduro’s close circle is still subject to individual sanctions, while on May 28, Caracas withdrew an invitation for the European Union to send electoral observers to monitor the upcoming vote.

Gonzalez claims he’s not worried about possible persecution, telling CNN En Español that he is “very calm, confident although aware of the enormous challenge” the opposition is up against.

Asked about the prospect of a repeat of the 2018 election, which Maduro won amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging and a boycott by the opposition, Gonzalez says he hopes pressure from other countries will force Maduro’s hand.

Most experts say the international community is unlikely to intervene in Venezuela again after the debacle of the 2019 opposition uprising led by Juan Guaido, the then-opposition leader who swore himself in as interim president and was recognized by more than fifty countries – only for Maduro to retain power and ride out the storm unscathed. But Gonzalez seems buoyant nonetheless.

“Fraud, vote rigging, and threats are nothing new for us,” Gonzalez told CNN En Español, “But we’re confident that on the day the opposition vote will be so massive our victory will be indisputable.”

His family is not so tranquil. “We are worried, no doubt,” Gonzalez’s daughter Mariana told CNN. “But we’re trying to live one day at a time, because if we start thinking of what could happen, this or that, we stop moving,” she said.

The biggest question

But how to convince an authoritarian government entrenched in power for decades to voluntarily give up control and lead a democratic transition?

Gonzalez has never offered an answer to the question that hangs the July vote. Instead of detailing a roadmap to democracy, he has only hinted at what steps he would take should he win in July and the electoral authority effectively certify the result.

He said his biggest priorities would be taming inflation, another of Venezuela’s chronic ills and currently running at 64% year on year, and restoring trust in the institutions of power such as the judiciary, currently stacked by Maduro’s sympathizers.

The fate of the incumbent and his closest allies – several of whom are under investigation in the Hague for crimes against humanity – remain in the balance. But amnesty for outgoing officials could be on the table, Gonzalez told CNN en Español.

“In all political transitions and political crises, you have amnesty agreements and transitional justice. All the countries who have gone through situations like ours have ended up granting it, so I don’t rule out we could take a similar measure in Venezuela,” he said.

While the election is slated for late July, Venezuela law mandates that the winning candidate won’t take office before January 2025 – creating a delicate 6-month handover period that Gonzalez would have to manage carefully if he wins.

“Those six months will be key for him as a president-elect, while the entire state apparatus remains under the control of the regime,” said Sadio Garavini di Tullio, a classmate of Gonzalez who also served in the foreign office and helped manage the opposition in the Chavez years.

“Edmundo however can be that person; he can give a lot of guarantees to everyone involved with the regime.”

“He will not be the president of the opposition government, he’ll be the president of the transition government,” Garavini di Tullio said.

George Eickhoff, a German diplomat who served as director of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Caracas between 2008 and 2013 and remains close to Gonzalez, made a similar point.

“Edmundo is a public servant, he knows there cannot be any revenge [against the government],” Eickhoff told CNN. “He has already started to speak to the other side: for the opposition, Machado is the firebrand messenger to galvanize its base, while Edmundo is an extension of the soft message, he’s very realistic about his task.”

Asked about the possibility of vote-rigging by the Maduro regime, Gonzalez was sanguine.

“We’re aware we’re facing an enemy,” he began – then corrected himself, softening the message: “An adversary that has no qualms about using any advantage the system gives them.”

Grandfather figure

The dual message has been visible throughout this first month of the political campaigning period, with Machado, a long-time conservative politician who first ran for president in 2012, holding public rallies in every street, while Gonzalez has dispensed calmness from his home in Caracas.

When Gonzalez’s candidature was formalized in April, a portrait of him by Bloomberg photographer Gaby Oraa went viral in Venezuela.

It shows the candidate feeding four colorful tropical parrots called guacamayas, typical of Caracas.

Across the city, citizens routinely feed these wild birds who can display a pet-like loyalty.

“They come every day, two, three, four… sometimes even ten. They are his friends,” said Mariana, Gonzalez’s daughter. “The guacamayas come in the morning and in the evening, he can spend hours just feeding them sunflower seeds. He takes care of them.”

His other passions, according to those who know him well, are baseball, the Real Madrid football club, family barbecues, and reading.

Fans see in him a grandfather-of-the-nation type figure who could usher in a new era after the political violence of the last decade, pointing to his electoral slogan “Edmundo, president for all”, as well as his age (73) and family situation (he has four grandchildren).

Two of those grandchildren now live in Spain, among the more than seven million Venezuelans who have fled the country in recent years. He hopes that an opposition victory in July would encourage at least some of that diaspora to return.

“It’s time for the big Venezuelan family to come together once more,” he told CNN en Español.

“It’s time that the adversary is respected as such, and not seen as an enemy,” he added. A message again, of moderation and transition.

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