Venezuelan opposition candidates give press conference. Photo: Misión Verdad.
In Venezuela, the process of registering presidential candidates for the July elections was carried out with significant drama, intrigue, and betrayals among the ranks of the various oppositions.
Manuel Rosales, leader of the Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) party and current governor of the state of Zulia, closed the registration day for opposition candidates, last in a long list of 12 figures from various spectrums of anti-Chavismo.
The closing of the process was decided by the controversy surrounding two names—Manuel Rosales and Corina Yoris—and by the various indications that there were apparent “problems with the automated application system” that supposedly would have prevented the registration of candidates by the UNT organizations and the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).
The ephemeral Corina Yoris
By last Friday, March 22, the opposition represented by the factors that make up the PUD still did not have a strategy to replace María Corina Machado, who was unable to run due to her longstanding legal troubles.
Machado, who won the opposition leadership in dubious primary elections held in October 2023, claimed the power of sole decision-maker over her replacement figure. The leader had maintained a narrative for months in which she criticized any suggestion that another name would replace hers on the ballot.
Henrique Capriles, leader of the Primero Justicia (PJ) party, pointed out on several occasions the need to discuss methods of appointing other options to Machado, not necessarily selected from the individuals who had participated in the primaries; however, his demand was rejected by Machado and her followers.
The lack of strategy resulted in Machado’s decision to appoint Corina Yoris, an 80-year-old university professor who was part of the National Primary Commission, as her preferred replacement candidate. The name Yoris arose due to Machado’s trust, but it was also a political marketing strategy. Furthermore, Yoris had already been accused, along with Teresa Albanes and Jesús María Casal, of “hijacking” the primary elections in favor of Machado.
According to spokespeople from the PUD and María Corina Machado herself, the PUD and UNT were prevented from making their applications digitally, but there is no conclusive evidence of this. Both parties were supposed to register Corina Yoris, but this did not happen as the nomination process closed late into the night on Monday, March 25.
Corina Yoris’s nomination was already marked by controversy, as she was considered an “alter ego” of María Corina Machado. For this, it was necessary to review the rules of the game.
The electoral governing body, the National Electoral Council (CNE), advanced the date on which applications could be submitted.
“Although the website publication indicates that the admission or rejection of applications will be from March 28 to April 1, the instructions given to the parties indicate that admission will be decided between March 21 and 25,” wrote the opposition journalist and expert in electoral issues Eugenio Martínez.
According to Martínez, simultaneously with the application process, there was a process of reviewing the applications and, although Yoris did not manage to be nominated (for reasons that are not yet clear), it is a fact that her name was under discussion as a “delegate.”
The application process for presidential candidates is governed in accordance with the provisions of the Organic Law of Electoral Processes (LOPRE) and its General Regulations.
In accordance with Article 61 of the LOPRE, the CNE is empowered to rule on “the admission or rejection of the application.” The evaluation that the CNE carries out of the applications includes the review of the government plan of each candidate in addition to the eligibility conditions provided for in the Constitution and electoral laws.
Article 120 of the General Regulations of the LOPRE establish that “the non-compliance with any of the eligibility conditions required by the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the Laws” would prevent a candidate from registering. Of course, this article states that a disqualified person cannot participate, but not necessarily any person who is qualified can do so.
In the case of Corina Yoris, her announcement as a candidate was made under the supervision of María Corina Machado. It was a candidacy proposal without its own government project. She did not represent any of her own parties, nor has she been a directing actor. That is to say, it was a candidacy proposal “by delegation” or “alter ego.”
It is very likely that in a review process of Corina Yoris’ application, it would not have been validated by the CNE, given that it was a public and well-known fact that this person did not have a minimum of autonomy to assume the position and, consequently, was attempting to assume the candidacy so that she could act on behalf of another person (Machado). It is likely that the CNE would conclude that this state of affairs would constitute electoral fraud and, as a result, would have prevented Yoris’ application.
Yoris’ candidacy likely violated Article 139 of the Constitution, which states that the exercise of public office “carries individual responsibility.”
Article 225 of the Constitutional text states that the executive power “is exercised” by the president of the Republic. For its part, Article 226 states that it is “the head of state who directs the action of government,” and Article 232 indicates that the president is responsible for his or her actions and the obligations of their post.
As a result, Corina Yoris’ promise to be a candidate to take office “in the name of” Machado and in order to initiate a transition” is thereby illegal and unconstitutional, since it openly implied the intention of establishing a de facto transfer of power to a particular person. The functions of the presidency are non-transferable.
The difficult application process and the internal opposition conflict
This Tuesday, March 26, opposition leader María Corina Machado declared in a press conference that the nomination of Manuel Rosales as a candidate was a “betrayal” of the PUD and the mandate of the opposition’s October 2023 primaries.
During these statements, Machado was asked if she would support Manuel Rosales. Her only candidate was Corina Yoris, she replied, and declared that she would fight until Yoris was registered as a candidate.
Until the early hours of Tuesday, March 25, it seemed that the PUD and its “unitary” ballot would not present a candidate and, thus, would not participate in the election, while the UNT ballot would have Rosales’ name as a candidate.
The wounds and open divisions among the opposition factors reached a new zenith, in surely irreparable ways, due to the controversy over the registration of candidacies, which occurred during closed meetings between the leaders of the parties that make up the PUD.
As a relevant point of the debate, it appears that the “technical impossibility” of registration by the PUD and UNT was simply a mechanism put in place by the CNE to regulate the application process.
However, the only “proof” of this is a live video released by the PUD in which a person tries to log into what appears to be the automated application system. In the images, one cannot see the domain name of the website. This attempt allegedly took place late at night on Monday the 25th. However, on March 22, journalist Eugenio Martinez commented that the CNE had established time blocks for political organizations to carry out their application processes.
This suggests that the PUD was attempting to register candidates outside of its allotted time. Additionally, there were no reports of in-person activity by PUD members to try to carry out the process through administrative means in the CNE.
It is likely that the delay on behalf of the PUD was due to debates and disagreements that occurred behind the scenes within the opposition. This is particularly likely when one considers the intransigence on the part of María Corina Machado, who refused to budge on her proposal of putting forward Corina Yoris as a candidate.
Betrayals and intrigues
Journalist Carla Angola, a member of María Corina Machado’s communications ring, declared from her account on Platform X that the UNT emissaries “deceived the nine parties of the Unitary Platform.”
Angola said that every time the rumor was mentioned that Rosales was already going to register, UNT representatives assured them: “How do you think that can be true if we are here with you?”
“They deceived them all. The system was closed for the MUD, but not for UNT,” Angola stated.
However, there were more contradictions between opposition actors on the issue of “the system.” UNT appears to have registered Rosales early in the afternoon of Monday the 25th while they publicly pretended that they did not have access.
Nícmer Evans, an opposition activist who is also head of the Punto de Corte media outlet, wrote that “according to his sources,” UNT tirelessly pushed for Rosales’ nomination by consensus, trying to gain the support of a large part of the PUD, but that they met with stubborn refusal on behalf of Machado, who even left a meeting claiming that she would not accept any other candidate to be named other than Yoris.
The UNT emissaries had gone to the CNE to obtain the nomination of Rosales through administrative means, but also, knowing that there would not be an agreement in the PUD, of which they are also a part, they obtained the nomination of someone else (whose name has not been revealed at the time of writing) in order to “safeguard space” for a later replacement and to be able to use the PUD card in the election.
According to Evans, Rosales will seek to gain more support in the PUD to obtain their endorsement, but the public commotion that this issue has generated makes that possibility very unlikely.
According to Orlando Avendaño, accused of being part of the entourage of “journalists” at the service of Machado, in addition to UNT, the leaders Henry Ramos Allup, Henrique Capriles, Juan Pablo Guanipa, and the Fuerza Vecinal party (FV) participated in this arrangement; the latter appeared before the CNE on the night of Monday the 25th to support Rosales’ candidacy.
“Until the end”
In the span of just three days, a year of political work by the PUD and other actors outside it, like María Corina Machado herself, collapsed.
This crisis was foreseeable because of Machado’s personality, her stubbornness, and her refusal to cede control over the opposition. Despite Machado’s obvious and visceral rejection of Rosales, she insisted that she would remain “on the electoral route,” pushing for the registration of Corina Yoris.
Machado knows that significant public attention weighs on her. She does not want to lose her support by openly siding with abstention, but the evident rupture between the opposition forces is deep and significant.
For Machado, “all” of the candidates are “Maduro’s” candidates, while Rosales declared that he had run “to fill a space and to give Venezuelans the opportunity to participate in the election.”
In total, we know the names of 12 opposition leaders who will go to elections against a single candidate registered by the Chavista parties: Nicolás Maduro.
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/KW/SL
Misión Verdad
Misión Verdad is a Venezuelan investigative journalism website with a socialist perspective in defense of the Bolivarian Revolution
