Democratic Action pre-candidate Carlos Properi speaking at a political rally. Photo: X/@prospericarlos/file photo.
Frictions within the Venezuelan opposition were visible again this Friday night when the Democratic Action (AD) party asked for the opposition primaries to be postponed due to irregularities in the process. This raised strong criticism from other far-right opposition pre-candidates, some of whom demanded an emergency meeting.
Through a statement, AD expressed its dissatisfaction with major irregularities concerning the primaries only 36 hours before they are scheduled to be held. Given this scenario, this political party requested that the primary elections be postponed and rescheduled: “The self-managed primary represents a huge challenge. That is why we ask the National Primary Commission (CNP) to postpone and reconsider the election [scheduled for this Sunday, October 22].”
The party explained that the suspension of the primaries would allow the necessary correctives to be carried out to guarantee Venezuelans a truly comprehensive process.
AD warned that a few hours before the elections, major irregularities remain unresolved, such as the relocation of electoral centers, which “puts the participation of all sectors at risk this Sunday.”
Likewise, AD warned of the disproportionality in the assignment of table members by Súmate, an NGO controlled by pre-candidate María Corina Machado.
“14,941 members have been assigned to the Vente Venezuela party while 6,998 [have been assigned] to Democratic Action,“ wrote AD in the document.
Other irregularities they reported included the fact that, as of Friday night, many AD members and witnesses were not accredited, and in most states, the electoral material had not been distributed.
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The attack against AD
After the publication of the statement, other pre-candidates attacked AD and accused it of wanting to sabotage the process.
The Justice First (PJ) and Encuentro Ciudadano parties ratified their support for the National Primary Commission in the organization of the elections, although they admitted that there were various irregularities in the process.
The CNP even called an emergency meeting, to which it invited a representative of AD and its candidate Carlos Prosperi to discuss the statement.
After the meeting, the president of the CNP, Jesús María Casal, stated that the election will take place, and he invited Venezuelans to participate.
The objective of the primary elections is to elect a sole representative of the far-right opposition to run in the 2024 presidential race. However, the process has only revealed the lack of organization and divisions that exist within this political sector.
Carla Angola X post
Miami-based far-right journalist Carla Angola, in an attempt to “clarify” the internal frictions, only managed to make more evident the sizeable rifts in the far-right opposition sector after posting a message on social media:
They tell me that those who ask to suspend the primaries at the last minute are those who are not ready.
The supposed “machinery” of some parties that now question the National Primary Commission turned out to be a myth. They inform me that they were not able to propose members for all the voting centers; therefore, it is logical that they [the Democratic Action party] cannot have members in all the voting centers. They had been preparing this path, they reported problems with the voting centers, which were supposedly not easy to locate, that their candidate could not find their voting center. The last thing we saw this morning was that, according to what they say, the polling station members were not assigned.
It’s very simple: The biggest difficulty they faced in preparing the lists of voting center members is that the parties did NOT allow other parties to know their own members. The CNP had to make lists practically one by one for each party so that the other parties would not see them. The CNP could not send the code to regional boards and NGOs so that everyone could enter the database, contribute to the lists [of voting center members], and see what was missing. None of this could be done because some parties did not want others to know their members. Once these difficulties were overcome, this morning they confirmed to me that the lists of voting center members were given to each political organization and the AD representatives (who are now asking to suspend the primaries) did not say anything or make any objection…
(RedRadioVE) by Ana Perdigón with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
