Venezuela’s government on Tuesday stepped up its attacks on the opposition’s primaries to elect a challenger to President Nicolás Maduro next year
From
REGINA GARCIA CANO Associated Press
October 24, 2023, 5:20 p.m. ET
• 4 min reading
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — The Venezuelan government on Tuesday stepped up its attacks on last weekend’s opposition primaries to elect a challenger to President Nicolás Maduro next year, saying the turnout claimed by organizers was inflated and constituted a crime.
Maduro’s government and its allies have spent months obstructing the opposition’s efforts to hold its primaries and have barred the now apparent winner from running – raising doubts about the effectiveness of Sunday’s vote. The attacks on the legitimacy of the primaries could also stoke fear among voters already wary of government reprisals for voting.
National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez said the partial results, which showed a turnout of at least 1.6 million voters, were mathematically impossible given the number of voting centers available and the time it takes for a person to cast a vote.
“What happened last Sunday was not an election, it was a farce, it was a fraud,” Rodriguez said Tuesday. “Knowing they were planning the farce, we sent one person to each polling station and counted them one by one, minute by minute and hour by hour.”
He called the organizers “criminals” and stressed that he had provided “sufficient evidence proving a crime in Venezuela.”
María Corina Machado, a long-time government opponent and former lawmaker, has already declared herself the winner of Sunday’s election after results showed her far ahead of nine other candidates. The partial results released by the organizing National Primary Commission showed that with 65% of the vote counted, Machado had 1,473,105 votes, or almost 93% of the total. Her closest competitor had just under 70,819 votes, just over 4%.
The primary was open to all registered voters in Venezuela and about 400,000 people living abroad. Within the South American country, voters braved repression, censorship and the weather to take part, even in neighborhoods once considered strongholds of the ruling party.
Organizers have not projected participation numbers, but logistical problems, fuel shortages, threats and government repression led those involved or familiar with the operation to initially estimate the number of participants at around one million. That forecast doubled as more people went to the polls in Venezuela and other countries, including Spain, Mexico and the United States
The strong turnout of Venezuelans inside and outside their homeland showed a deep desire for an alternative to Maduro’s decade-long, crisis-ridden presidency.
Opposition efforts have had difficulty keeping participants’ names secret in the past, and voter fears could be reignited by the surveillance of the voting center described by Rodriguez on Tuesday.
In 2004, a pro-government lawmaker published online the names of millions of people who had signed a petition to take part in a referendum to recall then-President Hugo Chávez. Many on the list said they lost government jobs and support after their names were made public.
Conducting Venezuela’s first presidential primaries since 2012 required the cooperation of the deeply divided opposition. That alone was an achievement. But it could still prove pointless if Maduro’s government wants it.
While the government agreed in principle last week to let the opposition choose its candidate for the 2024 presidential election, Machado remains officially barred from running. And Maduro’s government has a history of bending the law, retaliating against opponents and breaking agreements at its own discretion.
Last week’s agreement was part of a two-year negotiation process between Maduro’s government and an opposition faction backed by the U.S. government. The agreement calls for both sides to work together on election conditions before next year’s election.
Rodriguez, Maduro’s chief negotiator, said on Tuesday he planned to call a meeting with his opposition counterpart and a Norwegian diplomat who has been leading the dialogue process to address the primaries’ alleged violations of the agreement.