‘The M Factor’: Venezuela Launches Reality Show to Pick Theme Songs for Maduro’s Sham Election

Venezuela’s socialist regime announced this week the launching of a reality television show called M Factor, where local musicians will compete to have their songs become part of dictator Nicolás Maduro’s official soundtrack for the upcoming sham presidential election.

The upcoming weekly reality show, Maduro regime officials announced on Tuesday, will begin airing on April 28 and will conclude on June 15. Casting for the show’s participants will run from Friday, April 12 to Sunday, April 14.

The show will be aired by TVes, a channel that is part of the socialist regime’s massive state-owned media apparatus. TVes was launched in 2007 after late dictator Hugo Chávez forced the closure of Venezuela’s oldest television channel, RCTV, taking control of the channel’s broadcast infrastructure:

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Winston Vallenilla, a socialist lawmaker and the show’s host, explained that the reality show will ultimately see three men and three women chosen as winners whose original songs, regardless of musical genre, will be part of Maduro’s presidential campaign.

“What Venezuela has lived through has given birth to themes. Hope is in the streets and has become music and lyrics of all genres,” Vallenila said. “The themes must talk about the homeland, Venezuela and the Revolution.”

The “award,” Vallenilla explained, will be to “accompany the President of the Republic during this historic campaign” and to orchestrate “their own musical production.”

The winners will also have the possibility of boosting their artistic career and be able to record songs with regime-affiliated musicians such as Omar Enrique, Omar Acedo, and Antonio “Potro” Álvarez.

The show will be produced by Camila Fabri – the wife of Alex Saab, Maduro’s alleged top money launderer and “financial brain.” Saab was arrested by U.S authorities in Cape Verde in 2020 on charges of using the United States’ financial system to launder $350 million from Venezuela’s state coffers through shady affordable housing contracts. The administration of President Joe Biden released him in December, as Saab was in the middle of undergoing trial proceedings at a U.S. court.

Fabri, an Italian national, is actively wanted by Italian authorities alongside Saab on separate money laundering charges.

The Maduro regime has scheduled a sham presidential election on July 28. Maduro is “running” in the fraudulent electoral event against regime-approved “opposition” candidates and known collaborationists, all but securing a new six-year term for himself.

The regime banned Venezuelan opposition’s frontrunner candidate, María Corina Machado, of the country’s only mainstream center-right party, Vente Venezuela, from running for public office as punishment for her calls to impose sanctions on the rogue socialist regime in response to its continued human rights violations.

The regime also forbade Machado’s substitute candidate, 80-year-old academic Corina Yoris, from registering her candidacy, leaving the Venezuelan electorate without a viable electoral choice in the upcoming sham election. Many of Vente Venezuela’s managers have been arrested in the Maduro regime’s “Bolivarian Fury” dissident crackdown wave.

Six Venezuelan dissidents close to Machado remain sheltered at the official residence of the Argentine ambassador in Caracas. The Maduro regime responded by cutting water and power access to the residence. The government of President Javier Milei formally requested that the six individuals be granted safe passage out of Venezuela, but the Maduro regime has not responded to the request at press time.

In October, the Biden administration, in exchange for a series of vague promises that the regime would hold a “free and fair” presidential election in 2024, granted the Maduro regime a still-active oil and gas sanctions relief package that has effectively restored the regime’s main source of revenue. The sanctions relief allows Venezuela to freely sell its oil in U.S. and international markets. Biden has not rescinded the sanctions despite Maduro violating the agreement and banning legitimate opposition candidates from his “election.”

The reality show debut follows years of the Venezuelan socialist regime commissioning original tracks for its propaganda pieces. In 2012, late dictator Hugo Chávez’s presidential campaign featured a song titled “Chávez, Corazón del Pueblo” (“Chávez, Heart of the People”). 

The Maduro regime debuted an official song for the socialist dictator’s 2018 sham election called “Juntos, Todo es Posible” (“Together Everything Is Possible”). Maduro’s propaganda cartoon superhero alter ego, Súper Bigote (“Super Mustache”), debuted his official salsa theme song in February 2023.

In 2017, the Maduro regime co-opted the international smash hit “Despacito,” producing a version with modified lyrics promoting the regime’s campaign for a “Constituent Assembly” that nullified the legislative powers of the then-opposition-led National Assembly. 

The modified version of “Despacito” featured pro-socialism lyrics and called for the election of the now long-dismantled Constituent Assembly. The incident prompted Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, the song’s original performers, to condemn the Maduro regime’s unauthorized use of the song. Maduro responded shortly afterwards by claiming that the United States had forced the artists to condemn his regime’s use of the song.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.