Venezuela opposition fails to register candidate for presidential election
Al Jazeera
Democratic Unitary Platform denounces ‘violation’ of voter rights after being unable to field rival to incumbent Maduro.
Venezuela’s main opposition coalition claimed it has been blocked from registering its candidate to challenge Nicolas Maduro in upcoming presidential elections.
The Plataforma Unitaria Democratica (PUD) said in a video issued on Tuesday that it had been unable to formally register presidential candidate Corina Yoris on the electoral authority’s online registration system before a midnight deadline. Neighbouring states have expressed concern that President Maduro has so far managed to block his chief opponents from the July 28 vote.
“They haven’t let us get in,” said coalition official Omar Barboza. Calling for the registry to be reopened, he blasted the “violation of the right of the majority of Venezuelans who want to vote for change”.
Yoris, 80, was named as the PUD candidate last week by Maria Corina Machado. The leader of the liberal Vente Venezuela party won the opposition nomination by a landslide last year, but she was blocked from running in the presidential election by the Supreme Court.
Yoris’s candidacy took the country by surprise. The academic is relatively unknown and, until now, her only public political role was helping to organise last year’s opposition primary in which 2.4 million voters defied government threats of criminal prosecution to select a candidate to run against Maduro.
