The Venezuelan opposition announces that in October it will elect a candidate for the presidential elections

First modification: 02/15/2023 – 20:52

Next October 22 could be the date on which it is known who will be the opposition candidate who will face Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections, an election that does not yet have a specific date. This was announced by the National Primary Commission (CNP), the opposition body in charge of regulating the process.

This election intends that the entire block against Chavismo can choose a candidate by voting that brings together the different opposition currents in 2024. A fundamental movement if they want to have some strength against the ruling party and that comes after years of constant confrontations and divisions that have weakened the opposition.

The president of the CNP, Jesús María Casal, warned that, although the day on which the opposition candidate will be elected is already known, “there are critical issues still pending decision, but the bases are already laid.”

It is also yet to be defined whether citizens will be able to access the polling stations that day to vote in the opposition primaries, the National Electoral Council (CNE) agreed to form a joint technical commission to evaluate the CNP’s request to use these voting centers.

The use of these voting centers can become fundamental if there is to be a large participation of the population called to vote and can help in the transparency of the elections. The problem is that from within the opposition there are already several voices that discredit the legitimacy of the CNP itself.

The union of a fractured opposition, a difficult problem to face

The opposition’s biggest problem right now, more than its confrontation with Chavismo, is the great internal division it faces. Within this current there are parties that range from the center left to the right, but what once united them with the common objective of removing Nicolás Maduro from power has been diluted over the last few years.

In the 2018 presidential elections, and in the elections that have followed, there has been an opposition sector that has refused to participate in the elections, alluding to the fact that it is “impossible” to win because the elections are “rigged”, a position that has made that Chavismo gain more quotas of power and that they have rejected from other opposition sectors.

In addition, since the self-proclamation of Juan Guaidó as interim president of Venezuela, this division has deepened, since various opposition sectors have been very critical of the opposition leader’s way of acting and have refused to consider him president when he had practically no de facto power. about Venezuela.

This is how on December 30, 2022, a majority of former opposition deputies voted to end the self-proclaimed interim government headed by Juan Guaidó and chose to remove him as the most media figure within the opposition bloc. The measure was involved in controversy, since Guaidó himself accused his colleagues of the “serious mistake” they were making.

The recomposition of the opposition bloc occurs at a time when the dialogues to end the political crisis with the Government have been re-established in Mexico and in which it seems that Venezuela enjoys an open door that can get them out of isolation experienced during the last four years thanks to the Latin American political situation –with a notable turn to the left in the governments of the region– and the geopolitical situation, with a war in Ukraine that once again makes Venezuelan crude interesting again for the West.

On the table now there are many questions. The first is whether it will be possible to generate a cohesive alternative with real options that does not become a melting pot of acronyms. The second will be around the conditions in which these presidential elections are held in 2024.

with EFE