The main Venezuelan opposition coalition said early Tuesday that electoral authorities didn\u2019t let it register its presidential candidate as the deadline ended, in what it called the latest violation of the citizens\u2019 right to vote for change in the South American country. The candidate, Corina Yoris, could not be registered by midnight Monday, which was the time limit for registering for the election set for July 28, said Omar Barboza, representative of the US-backed Unitary Platform coalition.<\/p>\n
In a video posted on the Unitary Platform X account, Barboza said this was \u201ca violation of the right of the majority of Venezuelans who want to vote for change,\u201d and he demanded the registry be reopened. Yoris, an 80-year-old unknown newcomer, was named Friday the substitute to opposition leader Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, who faces a government ban on her running for office. Hours before the opposition coalition couldn\u2019t register Yoris, President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro got the support of thousands as he made official his candidacy for a third term that would last until 2031.<\/p>\n
Polls show the unpopular Maduro would be trounced by a landslide if Venezuelan voters were given half a chance. The self-proclaimed socialist leader has so far managed to block his chief opponents from running while alternately negotiating and then reneging on minimal electoral guarantees promised to the US government in exchange for relief from oil sanctions. \u201cWe\u2019ve exhausted all of the possibilities,\u201d Yoris said Monday at a news conference in which she detailed her failed attempts to register, both electronically and in person, her candidacy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not just the name of Corina Yoris that is being denied but the name of any citizen that wants to run.\u201d In registering his own candidacy, Maduro, without mentioning Yoris by name, blasted his would-be rival as a \u201cpuppet\u201d of traditional elites. To date, 10 candidates have registered to compete in the July elections, none of them connected to the main opposition coalition and several seen as representing little threat to Maduro\u2019s power base. Once parties register their candidate, they have until April 16 to name a substitute.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The main Venezuelan opposition coalition said early Tuesday that electoral authorities didn\u2019t let it register its presidential candidate as the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":34848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[11651,10676,8216,991,11649,4719,11650,901,1047],"class_list":["post-34847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-blocking-of-opposition-candidates","tag-candidates","tag-coalition","tag-elections","tag-nicolas-maduro","tag-opposition","tag-puppets","tag-venezuela","tag-voter-suppression"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}