Zulia governor and Un Nuevo Tiempo presidential candidate Manuel Rosales during the interview at Venevision. Photo: Venevision.
The Un Nuevo Tiempo party (UNT) presidential candidate, and governor of Zulia state, Manuel Rosales, warned that if the Unitary Platform and those who have a leading role there do not decide on their strategy, they will be left without a candidate.
“I am not going to be a candidate outside the Unitary Platform because we helped build that Platform. We believe in unity. I’m not going to be a candidate like this,” he said during his participation in the Abriendo Puertas television program broadcast by Venevisión network.
“There you have the two slots and the candidacy. Choose a candidate, decide, and if you don’t like Manuel Rosales, say who you like and I’ll give it to him,” he added.
He said that thanks to his registration there is “a PUD (Unitary Platform) slot as an option in addition to the UNT slot.”
Likewise, he noted that his name was not the only one proposed to serve as a presidential candidate. “There were Gerardo Blyde, Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, four opposition governors (including him), and a long list of people who could have registered. We talked to many and no one wanted to. At the last minute—in the last minutes —I saved the electoral route.”
In the opinion of the governor of Zulia, if he had not done so, “everything would have been lost. Today we were not talking about votes, candidates, or anything. That’s the truth of it. Decide—he said, referring to the opposition— but if the PUD and those who have a leading role do not decide, we will be left without a candidate because I will not be a candidate. I am not desperate to be a candidate, nor do I want to be a candidate to come second or against anyone. I want to be a candidate to seek the reunion of Venezuelans if it is my turn. If not, whoever it is, whoever they decide,” he reiterated.
He also said that Edmundo González Urrutia as the current candidate for the PUD, to “take care of the space on the card so as not to lose it, which we managed to save on March 25 at night.”
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María Corina is responsible for the division
Rosales accused María Corina of being responsible for the internal division of the Unitary Platform (PUD) and described the lack of preparation on the part of the PUD to replace Machado after her disqualification was ratified as a “very serious flaw” .
“That disqualification has led us to all this problem. The most serious thing is that no provision was made because they had to decide; If the candidate who won the primaries cannot register, what is the replacement mechanism like and it was not done. A very serious flaw.”
The governor of Zulia insisted that he did not come to the nomination with a plan. “I didn’t come here as a politician to maneuver to keep the candidacy. No. I give it to them, let them assume it, and tell the country what they are going to do. I hope they don’t tell you that we are going to abstain. “I prevented Maduro from being alone on the court today and having already decreed six more years of him in the presidency,” he added.
Rosales insisted on his position and asserted that although he has the support of Fuerza Vecinal, the MAS, Bandera Roja, the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and other political movements, he will not be a candidate outside the PUD. “We believe in unity, we are defenders of unity. Now I cannot come, at the last minute for a candidacy, to be part of the PUD division.”
(Últimas Noticias) by Ana Perdigón with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/DZ
