First it was María Corina Machado, a popular former legislator. Then it should have been Corina Yoris, a little-known philosophy professor. Now, an opposition coalition has put forward a former diplomat, Edmundo González, as its third candidate against President Nicolás Maduro in elections due in July.
That is, at least for now.
The coalition of opposing political parties, the Roundtable of Democratic Unity, has been hoping for months to unite behind a single candidate who could pose a viable challenger to Maduro.
But as the rapidly changing field of potential candidates clearly demonstrates, the Maduro government has placed a number of obstacles to prevent this goal.
On Monday, a national electoral commission controlled by Maduro’s allies used a technical maneuver to block the coalition from putting Ms. Yoris on the ballot. It was the last day for presidential candidates to register to vote in July, and it appeared that the attempt to field a unified candidate had been thwarted.
Then, Tuesday afternoon, the coalition announced on the executives’ social media platform.
Bringing Gonzalez to the ballot, the opposition said on to push about a quarter of its population.
“This opens the door to a stronger starting point for the rest of the opposition to negotiate what will happen,” said Tamara Taraciuk Broner, who researches Venezuela for the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based organization. “Overall, it’s good news”
González’s provisional candidacy – which could only serve as a placeholder, with the parties able to swap alternatives for the next few weeks – was just the latest in a series of developments that caused whiplash over who would run against. Maduro in the July vote.
The Roundtable on Democratic Unity announced last week that it had agreed to propose Ms. Yoris, 80, to run against Maduro in a show of unity after the country’s highest court in January barred Ms. Machado from the ballot ; the former lawyer was widely seen as a significant threat to Maduro.
Ms. Yoris’s nomination briefly raised hopes that free and fair elections might be possible. But as the week wore on, Ms. Yoris said she was unable to access the digital platform created by the country’s election authority to register as a candidate.
Every authorized political organization in Venezuela is provided with a code to access the electoral platform. But both Ms. Yoris’s party, A New Era, and the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition said their codes were not working, preventing them from registering Ms. Yoris.
“We have exhausted all avenues,” Ms. Yoris said at a news conference Monday morning. “The whole country will have no choice if I can’t sign up.”
As the day wore on, there was confusion amid signs that behind the scenes the government was trying to pull the levers of power and secure an electoral field that would give Maduro a better chance of winning.
Minutes before the registration deadline, the New Era party was inexplicably allowed to register another candidate: Manuel Rosales, party founder and governor of the populous state of Zulia, whose admission to the race was seen by political analysts as a approval from Mr. Maduro.
Rosales, in a speech delivered on Tuesday before announcing Mr. González’s registration, said he intended to wage a rigorous campaign, vowing to “lead the largest rebellion of votes that has ever existed.”
Two more candidates registered on Monday, bringing the total number of candidates in the election to 13, including Maduro. Most are considered close to the president and none are considered serious challengers.
“There is no doubt that Maduro wants to choose who to run against and is afraid to run against anyone who poses a threat to him,” Taraciuk Broner said.
It was unclear Tuesday why the government had allowed Mr. González to register and what it might mean for Mr. Rosales’s candidacy.
According to Rafael Uzcátegui, sociologist and director of the Peace Laboratory, a human rights organization, the continued confusion over who can and cannot run is a deliberate tactic by the Maduro administration to sow distrust among the electorate and divide the vote. based in Caracas.
In October, Maduro signed a deal with the country’s opposition and agreed to work towards a free and fair presidential vote. Maduro has said he will hold elections later this year and, in exchange, the United States, as a sign of goodwill, has lifted some economic sanctions.
Days later, Ms. Machado won more than 90 percent of the vote to choose an opposition candidate, in a primary election run by a commission without government involvement. The decisive results underlined her popularity and raised the prospect that she could beat Maduro in the general election.
Three months later, the country’s highest court, packed with government loyalists, declared Ms. Machado unfit to try what the justices said were financial irregularities that occurred when she was a national lawmaker.
Six of Ms. Machado’s campaign aides have been arrested in recent weeks, and another six have arrest warrants against them and are in hiding. Men on motorbikes attacked supporters of her events.
The government has not commented on the opposition’s registration efforts.
The vice president of the country, Delcy Rodriguez, announced on Sunday the creation of a state commission against fascism to address the threats of “power centers serving the global north”.
An unclassified US intelligence report in February said Maduro will likely win the election and remain in power “due to his control over state institutions that influence the electoral process and his willingness to exercise his power.”
Although the Maduro administration had placed allies on the electoral council, the intelligence report said it was “also trying to avoid blatant electoral fraud.”
Maduro, after registering to vote on Monday, claimed, without evidence, that two members of Ms. Machado’s party had tried to kill him that afternoon during a march to celebrate his registration. The Come Venezuela party denies it.
In his speech he criticized members of the opposition, calling them “lackeys of the right”.
“They pledged to call for sanctions against society and the economy, to call for blockade and invasion of their country,” he said. “They don’t think for themselves; they do not act for themselves. They are engaged in the US empire game to conquer Venezuela.”
“On July 28,” he added, addressing the opposition, “there will be elections with you or without you.”
