“No one is going to take this great opportunity away from us”. This has been the reaction of the Venezuelan conservative candidate, Maria Corina Machadoafter the incessant dialectical ‘bombardment’ of the last few hours against the opposition primaries, called for tomorrow Sunday inside and outside Venezuela. This candidate is her big favorite, since all the polls give her a majority of up to 60% ahead of his competitors, among whom the person who followed him in popular support, former governor Henrique Capriles, has already dropped out.
The political ‘torpedoes’ against the process that seeks to elect a unitary candidate to fight in next year’s presidential elections against Nicolas Maduro came not only from the Bolivarian power; There was also ‘friendly fire’. On this occasion, coming from Democratic Action (AD), whose standard bearer, Carlos Prosperiappears as the second option with more support thanks to the party apparatus of the social democrats. AD demanded that the primaries be postponed due to “the serious irregularities that we have pointed out in recent weeks and that make it impossible to carry out this process normally.”
Prosperi has also vented his anger with statements that would have been signed from the Miraflores Palace itself, inviting the “disqualified candidate” to postpone her interests in favor of Venezuelan democracy. Nicolás Maduro ordered in June the disqualification of Machado for 15 years, which prevents him from participating in elections. The president has reasons to do so, despite its unconstitutionality: different polls confirm that the leader of Vente Venezuela, which has the support of Voluntad Popular and the former political prisoner Leopoldo López, leads him by more than 40 points.
And this point is precisely the main difficulty of the Barbados agreements signed this week between the government and the opposition on the Caribbean island, but which has Washington as the main instigator. The US has given an ultimatum to Maduro to rehabilitate Machado before the end of November and to release political prisoners, starting with the Americans.
The response from the National Primary Commission (CNdP) was immediate: the process continues, although they have been invited to debate their complaints this Saturday with AD representatives. Several candidates, such as Delsa Solórzano, Andrés Velásquez, Andrés Caleca and César Pérez Vivas announced their support for the CNdP and its continuity.