The opposition to the government of Nicolás Maduro is drafting a regulation to choose its unitary candidate for the 2024 presidential elections in Venezuela next year in primaries.
The objective of the main political movements that detract from Maduro and the Venezuelan ruling party is for each party to nominate or support a candidate for the highest political position so that Venezuelans elect the candidate of the so-called Unitary Platform at some date in the second half of 2023. .
At least 10 opposition parties appointed a commission to prepare the regulations for next year’s primaries, he confirmed to the voice of america the first vice president of the National Assembly elected in 2015, Juan Pablo Guanipa.
The majority opposition organizations, known as the G4, participate in the commission: Primero Justicia, Acción Democrática, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and Voluntad Popular, where Juan Guaidó, leader of Parliament, and whom 50 countries recognize as president in charge of the country.
Also, the parties Movimiento por Venezuela, Encuentro Ciudadano, La Causa Radical, Proyecto Venezuela, Convergencia and Copei have joined the debate on the primaries, explained Guanipa, national leader of Primero Justicia.
The regulation is “still a project” that is being worked on, warns Guanipa. It is planned to include “the largest number of parties” in its wording in order to achieve “a broad and plural primary,” according to the Venezuelan legislator.
The regulation plans to include technical details for voting, such as the operation of polling stations. It also supposes a pact between those who support it to strengthen the partisan bloc against Chavismo.
Chavismo has not publicly declared who its candidate will be in 2024, but analysts assume that Maduro is the favorite to have the support of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela for his re-election.
The need to achieve a single candidate is the most notorious consensus so far, but there are “discrepancies” about whether that regulation will be in force in the elections following the presidential ones, acknowledges the opposition leader.
“Some consider that regulations for primaries should be drawn up, not only for 2024, but also for 2025. In 2025, there are elections for everything, for the National Assembly, governors, mayors, legislative councils,” he says.
“There is no definition of the times” of the primaries, he clarifies. There are those who think that each party should choose its candidate this year for primaries that would be held in the second half of 2023 or, more specifically, between September and December of next year, she says.
“Egos” and alliances
Juan Guaidó, who promotes a “national salvation” agreement from his government in charge, said last Friday that “this is not the time to talk about presidential candidacies”, but rather “unity and an alliance”.
“This is not the time for egos or pride (…) or is it that a person is above Venezuela? The agreement is for the date of the presidential elections”, she expressed during a public act of the Save Venezuela movement.
The opposition leader then considered that anti-Chavismo should seek the consolidation of unity and an agreement to achieve transparent elections.
In a past interview, however, Guaidó declared himself in favor of an internal election to choose a unitary candidate “as soon as possible.” He said that he did not lose “the dream” of becoming that opposition standard-bearer.
His statement on Friday generated criticism from one of the opposition parties with the greatest preponderance and tradition, Democratic Action (AD), whose leaders are already organizing their structures and promoting a unitary candidacy in the country.
Carlos Prosperi, its organization secretary and deputy elected in 2015, guaranteed that AD will present a standard-bearer for the presidential primaries.
“I hope they stop thinking that they are messiahs and help organize our people, without hidden campaign commandos (…) the time has come to speak the truth to our people and organize ourselves because in 2024, united in a great Democratic Coalition, we will to recover our country,” the politician replied to Guaidó.
Prosperi insisted that his party “is going to present a candidacy.” “We adecos are going to measure ourselves in primaries to choose the candidate,” he added.
Antonio Ecarri, from the Alianza del Pencil movement, a Guaidó dissident, presented his presidential aspiration last week. The candidate guaranteed that he represents the independent opponents and spoke out against the G4 for its way of doing politics and “destroying the foreign assets of the Republic.”
“These primaries are going to be controlled by the G4, by the same losers as always, excluding the entire country. We denounce that there is already a regulation approved by the G4 behind the back of the country and where they do not want independents to participate, ”he reproached in conversation with the VOA.
transparent voting
The approval of the regulations for the primaries to choose an opposition candidate is just one of the many pending points in a complex political process. One of the key issues that has stalled is the demand of the unitary platform from the ruling party, which controls powers such as the judiciary and the legislature, for better electoral conditions and guarantees.
The opposition demands a greater presence of honest international observers, the return of control and the cards of parties intervened through judicial rulings, the purging of the electoral registry and the prohibition of the use of public funds for proselytizing activities.
The formal dialogue with the Maduro government has been broken since last October, when the official delegation left the negotiating table in Mexico.
Although Maduro has expressed himself in favor of his return to dialogue, his spokesmen have just begun a round of consultations with various factors, especially so that these conversations include new opposition actors.
The parties close to Guaidó and that radically detract from Chavismo denounce the existence of a group of “scorpions” and “traitors” to their cause, who, according to them, mimic themselves as opponents to confuse voters.
That is one of the concerns of the unitary platform facing the primaries to elect its candidate for the presidential elections: would political actors considered close to the government’s agenda participate in them?
Guanipa, for his part, warns that the challenge of the regulation is that it be a tool for a “transparent” vote, whose winner is unanimously supported by all the parties of the unitary platform.
“You have to see which candidates are really opponents and which ones are agreed to be agents of the dictatorship. It is not an easy subject,” he indicated.
Another probable stumbling block that the regulations must contemplate, he said, is what will happen if the candidate chosen in the primaries is disqualified by Chavismo.
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