(Caracas) The Venezuelan parliament in the hands of President Nicolas Maduro will appoint a new National Electoral Council (CNE) one year before the 2024 presidential election, provoking the ire of the opposition and fears of political scientists.
“It is fundamental that the National Assembly, respecting the deadlines, urgently appoints the new National Electoral Council,” said parliament speaker Jorge Rodriguez during a session on Thursday, hours after the resignation of two pro-active members of the CNE’s management committee.
The current committee, made up of three pro-power members, including the post of president, and two pro-opposition, was appointed in 2021 following political negotiation after allegations of fraud in the 2020 legislative elections and the 2018 presidential election, with the non-recognition by the international community of the re-election of Nicolas Maduro.
The opposition had boycotted these two elections, but participated in the regional elections of 2021.
The president of the CNE Pedro Calzadilla and the rector Alexis Corredor, as well as six other substitutes propouvoir, made in the morning their “positions available to the National Assembly”, Mr. Calzadilla specifying that these resignations aimed at the appointment of a new CNE which represents a “consensus”.
The third pro-power member, Tania D’Amelio, had already resigned in April 2022 to join the Supreme Court.
“Implode the primary”
The two pro-opposition members did not resign, but Rodriguez said parliament would appoint five new members and ten alternates.
This change takes place while the opposition had precisely requested the CNE to support it in the organization, on October 22, of primaries to present a single candidate against Mr. Maduro during the presidential election of 2024, the date of which remains to be seen. to stare.
“Who benefits if there are no primaries? To the usual suspects! “, Launched the opponent Tamara Adrian by filing her candidacy Thursday before the National Commission for the Primary Opposition. “The ruling coalition has taken a decision: ‘we are going to implode the primary by temporarily eliminating the CNE so that there is no response to the request for technical assistance’”.
The power “wants multiple (opposition) candidates against a single candidate (of the power) […] Remember 2004: (former President Hugo) Chavez wins with 33% when 66% of the vote went to three other candidates […] The coalition (of the opposition) is the only way to oust the dominant coalition in power”, lambasted Mme Adrian, who in 2016 became Latin America’s first transgender MP.
One of the main opposition leaders, Juan Guaidó, declared on Twitter: “Those who have ‘demanded’ that this be done with or without the CNE, can leave this aside… It is up to all of us to reunite the country. with the primary and this goes through an obvious thing: to carry out the primary”.
Jesus Maria Casal, President of the Primary Commission, assured him: “We are moving forward. The date fixed for the primary election is maintained. But it will probably take a much bigger effort, a much more determined effort.”
Political scientist Ana Milagros Parra believes that it is for power to “delay the primaries and divide public opinion”.
Analysts fear that the appointment of a new CNE is the sign of a recovery in hand. “There is no coordination between the current members and the power. Power needs people who are more subordinate to the decisions of the executive,” notes political consultant Pablo Andrés Quintero.
The outgoing CNE organized the regional elections in November 2021. The European Union, an observer for the first time in 15 years, had reported irregularities, but also noted “better conditions”.
The power had won the majority of the positions of mayors and governors, but it had lost Barinas, the native state of the late President Hugo Chavez (1999-2013), governed by his family since 1999. Justice had resumed the first election while the CNE was slow to validate the results and, a month later, the opposition had won the election.
For Mr. Quintero, power also seeks “to demoralize people, to promote a scenario of abstention, of disillusionment with the idea of voting, of working on the perception that it is not worth voting. Because the government does what it wants”.