Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro thwarts main opposition candidates ahead of election

Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro appears to have cleared the field of his strongest challengers for the July election after the main opposition candidate was banned and her stand-in was unable to register.

Revolutionary socialist Maduro, a former bus driver who has ruled since 2013, has presided over an economic collapse in the country. About three-quarters of the once-wealthy oil-exporting nation’s gross domestic product has been lost during Maduro’s presidency, triggering the exodus of 7.7mn people as the economy declines and violent crime rises.

The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has nevertheless confirmed that Maduro will be its candidate for a fresh six-year term.

Corina Yoris, the person most likely to mount an effective challenge to Maduro in the presidential election, complained on Monday that she had been unable to register her candidacy ahead of a midnight deadline.

“My rights as a Venezuelan citizen are being violated by not letting me enter the [computer] system and register my candidacy for the presidency of Venezuela,” Yoris told a news conference.

Yoris, an 80-year-old university professor who was previously unknown politically, was named at the weekend as the candidate for the main opposition grouping, the Unitary Platform, after the Maduro government ratified a ban on María Corina Machado standing. Machado is a longtime Maduro critic who won an overwhelming opposition primary victory last year. 

Yoris was picked as a stand-in because she had no obvious impediments to running but was unable to access the election authority’s computer system or enter the electoral council building to register.

One moderate opposition party, Un Nuevo Tiempo, did manage to register its candidate Manuel Rosales before the deadline, according to a social media post by opposition negotiator Stalin González. Rosales has not explained how he was able to register at the last minute, while Yoris could not access the registration system.

“We Venezuelans want to participate in decisions, we want to vote and that’s why we have registered Manuel Rosales,” González wrote on X. “When we have opted for abstention, we have left Venezuelans without an option.”

Rosales, 71, is serving a second term as governor of Zulia state in northwestern Venezuela. It is unclear whether the electoral authority, controlled by Maduro’s allies, will allow his candidacy and whether Unitary Platform will choose to back his campaign.

Machado avoided endorsing Rosales in a news conference on Tuesday, saying that Yoris remained the main opposition candidate. “What we warned about for many months ended up happening: the regime chose its candidates,” Machado said.

Maduro claimed he was “the people’s candidate” as he registered his candidacy on Monday. However, polls show that he is unpopular among voters and would lose a free election against Machado by a landslide.

The president, whose government is under investigation by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity, has used a crackdown and a spectre of assassination plot allegations to justify arrest warrants for some of Machado’s key staff — a development the US state department has described as a “disturbing escalation of repression”.

The restrictions on opposition candidates make it more likely that the US will reimpose Trump-era sanctions on Venezuela’s oil and gas industry when a temporary relaxation expires next month. The Biden administration unwound sanctions last October in return for promises from Maduro’s government to move towards free and fair elections, an agreement which now lies in tatters.

Argentina’s rightwing government led a group of seven Latin American nations, including Ecuador, Guatemala and Peru, in condemning the Venezuelan government’s latest actions. “This situation . . . raises more questions about the integrity and transparency of the whole electoral process,” a joint statement issued by Argentina’s foreign ministry said.