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

Gonzalez will represent Venezuela’s political opposition coalition in a potentially history-making presidential vote on July 28.

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.