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Venezuela’s top court has suspended the results of this month’s opposition primary despite promises from the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro to allow the opposition to choose its own leader.
The Supreme Justice Tribunal, which is stacked with government appointees, ruled that “all effects [of the primary] are suspended” and demanded that organisers hand over all ballots and other documentation relating to the vote. Market-friendly former politician María Corina Machado won the primary poll with about 93 per cent of the vote.
Monday’s announcement came as organisers of Venezuela’s primary appeared at the attorney-general’s office as part of a criminal probe into how the vote was conducted. Opposition members and analysts have dismissed the inquiry as a political move to discredit the primary and Machado’s candidacy.
The ruling and probe come after the government and opposition struck an electoral deal earlier this month to hold elections next year. That deal paved the way for the US to relax strict sanctions on Venezuela’s oil, mining and financial sectors, potentially boosting the economy after years of collapse.
Stalin González, a member of the opposition’s negotiating team, said the ruling could affect the deal that it reached with Maduro. “There’s going to be obstacle after obstacle,” he said on Monday about the path to next year’s election. “But Venezuelans’ desire for change will not be held down by a judicial sentence.”
In June, Caracas’s comptroller-general disqualified Machado, who has long been a fierce critic of Maduro and once advocated foreign intervention in Venezuela, from holding office for 15 years, in effect barring her from running in next year’s general election.
The US has warned that the easing of sanctions could be reversed if bans on candidates are not lifted and political prisoners are not released.
“We urge Nicolás Maduro and his representatives to uphold the commitments they made at the signing of the political road map agreement,” the US state department said on Monday. “The US government will take action if Maduro and his representatives do not meet their commitments.”
The primary, which was conducted without state support, saw more than 2.4mn voters turn out to cast their votes in an election viewed as a chance to unseat the strongman Maduro, whose victory in the 2018 presidential election was regarded by the US, EU and opposition as fraudulent.
Since assuming the presidency from the late Hugo Chávez in 2013, Maduro has presided over an economic collapse and widespread shortages of food and fuel. A loosening of currency controls in recent years helped to alleviate the crisis but it did not stem an exodus, with about 7mn Venezuelans leaving the country in the past decade, according to the UN and overseas governments.
Maduro has not yet announced his candidacy in next year’s election, although he is widely expected to run.
Carmen Beatriz Fernández, who runs Venezuelan political risk consultancy DataStrategia, said the Maduro government’s decision to allow the primary to take place and then move to discredit it was part of a strategy to exact concessions without risking his political survival.
Maduro was trading Venezuela’s “kidnapped democracy” for US sanctions relief, she said. “So he’s trying to have the best of both worlds. [Maduro] always moves in ambiguity. He will keep opening up and then closing off in order to gain as much as he can.”
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