CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was everywhere in the run-up to Sunday's elections, shaking his fist on state television, smiling on the facades of Caracas buildings and beaming into the night sky of Maracaibo.
Unlimited access to state media and propaganda funds allowed them to appear constantly on television, radio, murals, tollbooth signs, and even ambulances.
The opposition, meanwhile, has barely made a showing on its traditional campaign platform in a political climate widely condemned as authoritarian. Nevertheless, opinion polls show the opposition leaving Maduro in the dust.
It's not because he didn't try.
Savvy public relations people worked around the clock to portray the 61-year-old as a tough, anti-imperialist figure, but also as caring and sociable.
Maduro alternately denounces capitalism as “fascist,” dances salsa with his wife and promises prosperity after years of economic crisis forced more than 7 million Venezuelans to flee, about a quarter of the population.
“There is a saturation in people's minds that he can survive,” Leon Hernandez of the Institute of Information and Communications at the Catholic University of Andres Bello told AFP.
And, importantly, he reminds them that he is the successor to the late socialist icon Hugo Chavez. Unlike Maduro, he remains immensely popular and is hailed by many as a revolutionary hero.
With not a single independent TV channel left, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia's image was kept out of public living rooms.
Instead, the opposition communicates through YouTube and TikTok, a space they also have to share with Maduro’s 24-hour spin machine.
The president, seeking a third six-year term, used daily broadcasts to lambast the nation for his campaign “pilgrimage” to Venezuela.
He is also the protagonist of a film based on a book about his life that recently premiered at a Caracas theater.
To bolster his existential presence, Maduro created a cartoon character based on his own image: a caped hero named Super Bigot (Super Mustache), who fights monsters sent by the United States.
He recently adopted the Venezuelan symbol of a fighting cock with yellow, blue and red feathers, a move intended to accentuate his cheerfulness compared to the soft-spoken 74-year-old Gonzalez Urrutia.
Maduro's live campaign rallies are filled with the sound of roosters crowing, and campaigners praise the boxer's bird.
The rooster also appeared in a drone light show over Maracaibo, along with Maduro’s face. Maracaibo was once the center of Venezuela’s oil wealth, but today it suffers from constant fuel shortages and other problems.
Independent media, on the other hand, had little space for dissenting opinions.
During the two decades of Chávez's rule, more than 400 private newspapers, radio stations and television stations were shut down, as was the social movement that bore his name.
Others were bought by businessmen close to the regime, but many more chose to self-censor in order to continue operating semi-independently.
Foreign networks such as CNN Spanish and Deutsche Welle (DW) were pulled from cable providers' broadcasts by government order.
On platforms like YouTube where dissent cannot be suppressed, the onslaught has been relentless.
In the video, Gonzalez Urrutia is seen posing as Maria Corina Machado, a popular opposition leader who was blocked from the race by Maduro-aligned institutions, and is accused of fomenting a conspiracy and wanting to “give” Venezuela's oil to the United States.
In a country where the electoral authority is linked to the regime, there are no posters with Gonzalez Urrutia's face on them, and few posters suggesting the opposition.
During the campaign period, which officially ends on Thursday, Gonzalez Urrutia has been able to secure only a few interviews in the national press, amid an atmosphere of strict regime oversight and self-censorship.
Disinformation was also a popular tool.
Military leaders recently circulated a video of Machado and Gonzalez Urrutia speaking in front of a screen listing proposals to privatize the state-run oil company PDVSA and the education system.
AFP confirmed that the footage had been altered and that the screen was in fact blank.
