Capriles urges presidential "win by knockout" to overcome irregularities

Electoral victories by a short margin open up the possibility of changing the trend with the manipulation of votes in electoral centers, but a wide difference would prevent Chavismo’s strategies to inflate the numbers from changing the trend, reasons Capriles Radonski

The political leader Henrique Capriles Radonski held a face-to-face meeting with journalists to answer questions about the 2023 presidential elections, in commemoration of the 10 years since the controversial contest in which he was defeated by just over 200,000 votes and denounced a “fraud” that was never proven.

In an attempt to refute the alleged myths surrounding those elections and the collective thought that “he did not defend the vote,” Capriles Radonski spoke with journalists Gabriela González, from W Radio Colombia, Ibis León, from Efecto Cocuyo, Pedro Pablo Peñaloza , of Transparencia Venezuela, and Víctor Amaya, director of SuchWhich; with the intention of clarifying what happened a decade ago and encouraging voting for the primaries on October 22.

In a country with an increasingly low electoral participation —partially as a consequence of events such as the 2013 presidential election—, Capriles Radonski insists that it is necessary to believe that an electoral victory and a change of democratic government are possible despite the fact that the conditions are not are given for a fair and transparent contest.

Convinced that Chavismo cheated by using the electoral system of the National Electoral Center (CNE) in 2013, he believes that the formula for circumventing irregularities is to achieve a resounding victory, which prevents even possible cheating from changing the result. In boxing terms, he urged getting a win by “knockout».

«We won in 2013 and now we are going to win by knockout, as it was in 2015. It is the only way, as we won in Barinas in the last electoral process. It’s a boxing match and the judges are going to change your ballots, that’s why you have to win by knockout», he reasoned.

The presidential candidate recalled that the most important victory achieved by the opposition was during the 2015 parliamentary elections, when the opposition registered 7.7 million votes and 112 seats compared to 55 for Chavismo. To achieve this result, Capriles argues that the ground was paved with work on the electoral route during the years 2011, 2012 and 2013.

In this sense, he believes that it is a mistake that the opposition abandoned the electoral route and that dispersing the intention to vote in the elections after 2015 caused them to lose those resounding victories that make cheating impossible.

* Also read: María Corina Machado urges people to vote in primaries inside and outside the country

He pointed out the case of Andrés Velásquez, leader of La Causa Radical who lost the governorship of Bolívar state in the 2017 regional elections with alleged cheating by Chavismo. On that occasion, Velásquez presented evidence of his victory, but all his attempts before public institutions were inadmissible. Capriles Radonski believes that the story would have been different with a wider margin.

“You had to win knockout. To this day, the PSUV governs Bolívar, but the conditions were given to win by knockout. You do not remove the dictatorship with a tight result. They are not going to deliver a victory by a difference of one vote », he argued.

Regarding the belief that Capriles Radonski did not defend the vote in 2013 and handed over the victory to Nicolás Maduro, the leader responds that mobilizations were called and proceeded through formal channels, without a successful result.

“It is not true that here we do not take people out to protest. That is a lie that has been sold to people to make them believe that we chickened out, that we did not stand up. Of course we defended the result and exhausted all instances. We were never given the audit,” he stressed.