Caracas Chronicles

With two days of official campaign left, the candidates are rushing to make the most with the little time they have left. This is also visible on the airwaves and the inter-tubes.

Henrique Capriles Radonski wanted his commercials to play on the main state TV channel VTV, and its president William Castillo said there was no problem (even if he didn’t like the spots). But the ads never aired and Capriles complained that they were censored.

His camp has put all of them on YouTube for all to see and one important detail is that those ads were tailor-made to run there.

In one of them he addresses public employees directly to calm down their possible fears:

He also made ads for “mission” beneficiaries and talks about the political use of PDVSA.

In similar style, he brings the issue of security and explains what he will do if he’s elected.

Meanwhile, the Maduro camp released this one-minute spot, which is probably the closest we’ve seen so far to a biographical look of Nicolás Maduro, instead of simply repeat over and over again the endorsement of the late comandante presidente.

This feels like too little, too late. The whole theme of Maduro’s campaign was Chavez’s public pledge and now they’re realizing the need to introduce him to voters? The spot also fails to deliver because this was a case for “show, don’t tell”. Where are the old photos and videos? Where are the testimonies of people close to him? C’mon, even Jaua tried harder…

In another commercial, they show us how many places in the country Maduro has been so far, but unlike the candidate himself they got the names of the Venezuelan states right.

I think the “heartbeat” commercials were enough. The rest from Maduro is dissapointing.