Venezuela opposition conducts vote to select candidate for unity

Venezuela’s opposition is having a vote to pick someone to run for president in 2024.

Opposition parties have arranged the poll without any assistance from the National Electoral Council, which is led by a close friend of President Nicolás Maduro.

MrMaduro, who has been the leader since 2013, is likely to try to become the leader again in the 2024 election.

The opposition believes that their best way to defeat him is by coming together and supporting one candidate.

Opposition parties have not participated in previous presidential elections because many of their candidates were either imprisoned or disqualified from running. But they want to participate in 2024 even though they know it will be difficult.

They discussed their plan to have a primary election as soon as May 2022 and officially shared the news in October 2022.

But when they asked the National Electoral Council (CNE) for help to organize the primary, the CNE, which is mostly made up of people who support the government, did not respond until September 2023. At that time, the CNE recommended delaying the primary until November.

The opposing group said no and decided to plan and hold the primary election on their own. It says there will be over 3,000 places where people can vote.

The group of 13 candidates has become smaller to just 10 people. This happened because Henrique Capriles, who has tried to become president before but didn’t succeed, Freddy Superlano from the Popular Will party, and Roberto Enríquez from the Copei party, decided to not participate in the race anymore.
Polls show that the clear favorite is María Corina Machado, a 56-year-old former politician.

Although it is highly likely that Ms. Machado will win the primary, it is uncertain what will happen if she is selected.

This is because Ms Machado has been forbidden from being in charge for 15 years. She was banned in June by the comptroller-general, Elvis Amoroso, who is a friend of Maduro and now leads the CNE.

MsMachado is sure that if she wins the primary election, the government will feel so much pressure that they will put her back in her previous position.
On Tuesday, there was an agreement signed in Barbados between opposition negotiators and government representatives. However, there was confusion about a certain aspect of the agreement. The opposition negotiator believed it allowed disqualified candidates to participate in elections, while the leader of the government delegation disagreed with this interpretation.

The United States made some of its restrictions on Venezuela’s oil and gas industry less strict because Venezuela agreed to let international observers monitor its presidential election in 2024.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, was happy about the agreement, but gave a warning that the US could put sanctions back if the government of Maduro in Venezuela does not start allowing opposition presidential candidates by the end of November.