Venezuela: The opposition condemned that the candidacy of Corina Yorris for the presidential elections was prevented

The Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), the strongest group of the Venezuelan opposition, condemned its inability to register the candidacy of historian Corina Yorris for the elections on July 28.

He told the political forum that “access to the application system was never granted.”

Yoris Nicolás remained the main face of the opposition to Maduro after political leader María Corina Machado gave him her candidacy.

In 2023, Machado won the primaries organized by opposition forces to choose a candidate to challenge the current president for the presidency of Venezuela.

However, he could not register with the National Electoral Council (CNE) due to a measure of disqualification from holding public office imposed on him by the Comptroller General of the Republic.

Polls published up to that point showed that in an open electoral context, Machado could defeat President Nicolás Maduro.

After the disqualification, the PUD chose Corinna Yoris as its candidate, who had never participated in politics before and on whom any disqualification had no significance.

“We have used all the means at our disposal to solve this,” Yoris said at a news conference in the past few hours.

“From that very day, Thursday the 21st at 6 am (when the registration process started) we systematically tried to access the system and it was not possible,” he said on the platform’s X account, formerly known as Twitter. wrote.

The opposition requested that the candidate registration deadline be extended by three days, as had been done on other occasions.

However, the deadline to register with the National Electoral Council (CNE) expired at 11:59 pm on Monday, as announced by the entity’s president, Elvis Amoroso.

At the end of the deadline given by the CNE, a total of 12 nominations were submitted, all from parties and coalitions with little electoral importance, except for Nicolás Maduro. Now the CNE should review them.

Amoroso said they will carefully review the documentation and requirements to verify whether the registered candidates meet the requirements to be candidates for the Presidency of the Republic.

The current President of Venezuela formalized its registration after a march that toured a section of the city until reaching the CNE.

Among the candidates who call themselves opponents of Nicolás Maduro but who are outside the unitary platform, among others, Manuel Rosales, who was a presidential candidate in 2006, registered; Javier Bertucci, candidate in 2018, and Benjamin Rousseau, comedian best known for his character “Count of Guacharro”.

At the last minute, Enrique Márquez, former rector of the National Electoral Council, also registered with Centrados, a political platform initially rejected by the CNE but readmitted this Monday.

In statements to the press Márquez indicated that he presented himself as an independent candidate and that he did not agree with the unitary platform regarding his candidacy.

Márquez was the executive vice president of Un Nuevo Tiempo, an opposition party, until he was removed and suspended in 2018 for supporting that year’s presidential elections.

It is still unknown whether the unitary platform will support this candidacy given the impossibility of registering Yoris.

For his part, the historian said that through the CNE the government is leaving the country without any alternative.

“Not only are the rights of Corina Yorris being violated, but also the rights of political parties to offer a candidacy that represents that unity and that Venezuelans have the right to nominate and elect that candidate.” Also depriving them of the rights they want to choose. ,” the university professor announced.

Yoris, an 80-year-old academician, is relatively unknown even in opposition circles. The fact that he is a political newcomer was seen as an advantage by the coalition, which argued that it made it harder for his opponents to discredit him.

Maduro presented his candidacy for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and indicated that on July 28, “there will be elections with or without rights” and noted that the opposition has “puppets and puppets”.

“They (last names) are dragged before imperialism, they are blueprints, they have personal ambitions, they aim to deliver the country into the clutches of the North American Empire, they are despair, emptiness, a failed past,” he expressed.

According to Maduro, five million Chavistas expressed their desire to nominate their names.

He also highlighted this Monday that, as of that moment, there were 35 candidates registered by more than 10 organizations. “There may be more, this is a complete democracy,” he said.

Maduro has been in power since 2013.

Last month he told his followers that “no matter what happens, we will win, we will always win.”

The impossibility of being able to register its card of the Unitary Platform for these elections arose inside and outside Venezuela.

There were a number of countries that rejected it, including the governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, which expressed their “grave concern” at “persistent obstacles” to the registration of presidential candidates. . Before the National Electoral Council of Venezuela.

“These sanctions prevent progress towards elections that would allow the democratization process to advance in sister Venezuela,” said a text issued by the Uruguayan Foreign Ministry with the support of the above governments.

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