The opposition seeks to elect a single candidate in primaries with which it faces President Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections. “Nicolás Maduro, you are not the one who is going to choose the candidate who is going to face and defeat” the ruling party, Machado said in a news conference.
The Comptroller General of Venezuela – headed by Elvis Amoroso, a government supporter and close collaborator of Maduro – informed last week of the disqualification of Machado, accusing her of being a participant in an alleged corruption plot orchestrated by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who proclaimed interim president in 2019 when he was leader of the National Assembly.
Machado was the legislator with the most votes in the 2010 legislative elections in Venezuela and was later stripped of her parliamentary investiture. Although he has not been part of the Legislature since 2014, in recent years he has been one of the most critical voices of the leaders of the largest opposition parties, accusing them of failing in their policy to remove Maduro from office and, already weakened, of try to agree with the government in exchange for maintaining small quotas of power.
The decision that would make it impossible for him to participate in the next elections was questioned by the United States Department of State and by the head of foreign policy for the European Union, Josep Borrell.
In addition to disqualifying Machado, the Venezuelan Comptroller’s Office also accused her, without presenting evidence, of hiding information about her assets after the cessation of her functions as a deputy.
But Machado reiterated his determination to run in the October primaries, alleging that whoever wins will be “the candidate that Venezuelans and the international community will recognize.” The former legislator expressed her confidence that this will force Maduro and his allies to give in.
In Venezuela, political disqualification is an accessory penalty that applies when there is a final judicial sentence for a punishable act committed by a person when it is determined that he committed an abuse of power, office, among other cases provided for in local laws. Critics of socialist governments, including Machado, denounce that disqualification for years has been used as a political weapon.
The presidents of Paraguay and Uruguay joined the pronouncements against the disqualification on Tuesday, who during the last Summit of Mercosur heads of state asked their partners in Brazil and Argentina to “raise their voices” and denounce the restrictions policies imposed in Venezuela.
But the plenary of Mercosur presidents once again exposed the different perspectives on the political situation in Venezuela, a country that has been suspended since 2017 by the bloc without a consensus to lift the sanction.
The presidents of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, and of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, insisted on raising the need for a dialogue table between the government and the Venezuelan opposition, warning that Venezuela’s problems cannot be resolved with other countries “by interfering in internal matters.
While the Uruguayan Luis Lacalle Pou and the outgoing president of Paraguay, Mario Abdo Benítez, both from the center-right, demanded a joint statement from Mercosur.
Lacalle Pou questioned the emergence of a healthy democracy in Venezuela, when “a candidate with enormous potential is disqualified for political and not legal reasons.”
“Today we see a violation of the rights of María Corina Machado that attack the nerve of Venezuelan democracy,” warned Abdo Benítez. “The problem is not with the vision of Paraguay or with any ideological conception. This is a fact that clashes head-on and scandalously with the clear letter of human rights”.
Lula, who assumed the bloc’s pro tempore presidency, said he was unaware of the details of the resolution against Machado, but “what we can contribute, discuss, we will. What we cannot do is take into account the faults of one and not the other. No one should be left behind.”
The Maduro government and its allies, for their part, have vehemently rejected the pronouncements of Washington and Borrell, among others, accusing their critics of meddling once again “in internal affairs” of Venezuela.
The Inter-American Court of Human Rights —on July 8, 2020— in a pronouncement stated that “disqualification can only be imposed by a competent judge after conviction in criminal proceedings.”
Machado added that she is willing to “go to the end, with all the implications that this has” considering that if she accepts this logic, the disqualifications will continue until the candidate that “Maduro wants as a contender” remains.
Machado has already been disqualified from holding public office on another occasion, for one year. It was in 2014 after she agreed to serve as Panama’s alternate representative to the Organization of American States (OAS) with the purpose of denouncing the alleged crimes committed by the Maduro government.
The disqualification prevented him from running in the 2015 parliamentary elections which the opposition won overwhelmingly. There was never a final sentence from any Venezuelan court that endorsed the disqualification.
FUENTE: Associated Press
