Venezuela: Banned Opposition Leader Leads Primary to Run Against Maduro in Sham Election

CARACAS, Venezuela — Former lawmaker María Corina Machado obtained an overwhelming majority of the votes cast in the opposition’s Sunday primary election as of tallies available on Monday, making her the expected nominee-elect to run against socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro in a 2024 presidential election.

Machado’s ability to participate in the election – should the election occur – remains uncertain as the Maduro regime banned her from running for or holding public office through 2030 in response to her years of efforts to restore democracy to the country.

The Venezuelan Unitary Platform, the latest iteration of a longstanding coalition of “opposition” political parties that has adopted different names for more than 20 years, held a self-organized primary election on Sunday to pick a candidate to go against Maduro in next year’s election. Some of the coalition’s major parties are also members of the Socialist International.

The election was organized by the National Primary Commission, a non-government group established by the “opposition” to carry out all relevant proceedings pertaining to Sunday’s event.

As of early Monday morning, partial results presented by the commision show that Machado, who leads the country’s only mainstream center-right party Vente Venezuela, obtained 601,110 votes. Machado received over 93 percent of the vote, trouncing second-place candidate Carlos Prosperi of the Democratic Action socialist party, who received only 4.75 percent of the vote. Eight other candidates split the remaining 2.25 percent.

The primary commission has not announced participation numbers yet, but total participation is expected to have been a significantly reduced number of Venezuela’s approximately 21 million registered voters, as the process did not count with the logistical support and voting center infrastructure that the regime-controlled National Electoral Center has at its disposal.

According to the rules established by the commission, Venezuelans over the age of 18 who are part of the national registry were able to cast a vote, while those no longer living in Venezuela were able to participate at voting centers abroad so long as they had previously signed up and submitted their data on a website.

The National Primary Commission did not detail what steps it took to ensure that the primary election was free and fair beyond publicly stating that the “transparency of this election is guaranteed” this month, urging Venezuelans to give it “a vote of confidence.”

The primary commission has only published results that represent 26.06 percent of all votes cast as of early Monday morning. Although the majority of the votes have not been tallied, the commission, as well as participating political parties, have declared Machado the winner. The commission claimed the delay in results is caused by a “blockage” of the server that functions as a transmission channel, without directly specifying a cause or culprit.

The announcement of the delay in results came hours after the regime’s state-owned and the country’s main phone and internet service provider CANTV announced that telecommunications services in some areas of the capital city of Caracas had been affected by an “incident in the power backup systems.”

The Maduro regime, which has the ultimate say in what internet websites and services are accessible in the country, has for years enacted specific and quasi-surgical internet censorship across the country when it best suits its interests.

The Maduro regime ordered the nation’s television and radio stations not to cover the primary. All remaining private media in the country have long since self-censored to ensure their continued existence.

Prosperi, who came in second place according to the commission’s preliminary results, issued a statement Monday morning where he asserted the process had “irregularities.” Prosperi avoided congratulating Machado in his statement.

Local media reported on Sunday afternoon that a video circulating on social media that features Prosperi had allegedly been “leaked.” In the video, whose recorded date remains unknown, Prosperi is heard describing the primary as a “disaster” while claiming that he will not recognize the primary’s “biased” results.

“We will not count with us for some electoral results that are not the reality of what is being expressed today,” Prosperi is heard saying. “And all this is due to not having had the technical support of the National Electoral Council; unfortunately, we have seen the disaster we are in today.”

The Secretary General of the Democratic Action party (a member of the International Socialist) Henry Ramos Allup, the party Prosperi represented on the ballot, announced on Monday afternoon that the party accepted the primary’s results. Ramos Allup distanced himself from Prosperi’s reported stance, describing it as “his personal position but not that of the party.”

While Machado is the presumptive winner of the primary election, she presently remains unable to run for president, as the Maduro regime retroactively imposed a 15-year ban that prevents Machado from running for office until 2030. The socialist regime banned Machado as punishment for having expressed her support for international sanctions on the Maduro regime.

The former lawmaker nonetheless declared in the early morning hours of Monday, “from this very night, we begin the construction of a great national coalition.”

“For all Venezuelans who want the same thing, to displace this tyranny and build solid pillars, to join this unstoppable cause,” she said.

“Today, I received a mandate. And I assume the commitment to enforce this mandate,” Machado continued. “This mandate includes giving everything: our talent, experience, strength and love for Venezuela and freedom. The brightest and most glorious days of our history are coming. The days in which this force will continue to grow until we achieve our purpose, in 2024 to win, to collect and to oust Nicolás Maduro.”

Both the Maduro regime and the Venezuelan “opposition” agreed last week to hold a “free and fair” presidential election sometime during the second half of 2024 in negotiations held in Barbados. Machado, who denied being part of the negotiating table, stated last week that the agreements “do not provide certainty” towards free and fair elections, remarking that the Maduro regime has signed agreements in the past only to “repeatedly violate” them.

As a result of the agreement, the Biden administration rewarded the socialist regime by temporarily lifting oil and gas sanctions imposed on Venezuela during the administration of former President Donald Trump, allowing the socialist regime to once again sell its oil in U.S. and international markets.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has spent the past year pushing for negotiations towards “free and fair” elections, stated last week that, in return for the oil sanctions relief, the United States expected — before the end of November — that the Maduro regime present a timeline towards lifting the ban imposed on all candidates who want to run for president. Blinken also demanded a timeline for the release of all wrongfully detained U.S. nationals and Venezuelan political prisoners.

“Failure to abide by the terms of this arrangement will lead the United States to reverse steps we have taken,” Blinken said.

The Maduro regime dismissed Blinken’s demands, reiterating that banned candidates will not be able to run. The head of the regime-controlled National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, asserted shortly thereafter that only those who “comply with the law” will be able to participate in the “free and fair” election.

A poll released in August suggests that, under an actual free and fair election, Machado would defeat Maduro. If the Maduro regime upholds the ban imposed on Machado and other politicians, then Maduro, who is expected to run for a third term after clinging to power through a sham election in 2018, will have no rivals to compete against him. All remaining alternatives are either banned, such is the case of perennial twice-failed candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski, or exiled, such as former interim president Juan Guaidó and socialist “opposition” leader Leopoldo López, leaving minor “opposition” candidates and independent ones such as comedian Benjamin Rausseo.

Sunday’s primary process took place in about 80 cities across 31 countries abroad, in addition to voting stations within Venezuela. A voting center was planned to open in Tel Aviv, but was suspended due to security concerns following Hamas’ terrorist attack and invasion of Israel that took place this month. Additionally, Argentina’s electoral authorities did not authorize the “opposition” to hold its primaries on Sunday, as they would have taken place on the same day as the nation’s general election.

Christian K. Caruzo is a Venezuelan writer and documents life under socialism. You can follow him on Twitter here.