As a regular fan of Con El Mazo Dando, I always suspected that the Patriotas Cooperantes, the mysterious network of government informants that infiltrate opposition ranks and compile dirt for Diosdado to use as defamatory fodder, didn’t actually exist. I was more inclined to dismiss them as fictional characters concocted in a VTV basement somewhere,…
A couple of weeks ago, CC fellow blogger Audrey M. DaCosta wrote about Tamara Adrian, Venezuela’s fist-ever transgender candidate for public office. Her story made headlines and shone a much needed spotlight on the LGBT agenda in Venezuela. Now, thanks to Chavismo’s handling of their own gay and transgender candidacies, Adrian’s run for office has…
Last Friday saw the end of a nasty and self-destructive struggle for supremacy within the opposition coalition for the right to nominate the candidate for the safest opposition seat in the country: the Este-del-Este‘s Miranda Circuit #2. The outcome was…discomfiting: an AD-Voluntad Popular stitch up that sold Maria Corina Machado down the river in a nasty, vindictive slight…
It wouldn’t be an ordinary week in today’s Venezuela without the highest court in the land taking over a political party to appoint a pro-government clique to lead it. This week saw the turn of the National Integrity Movement, better known as MIN-UNIDAD. The Constitutional Chamber admitted a motion by Alix Ramon Medina, head of the MIN’s Barinas State branch, who…
MUD has not exactly covered itself in glory these last few days, but they did get one thing right: the new, chavistified COPEI has been thrown right out of the Opposition Coalition. Hurray!
Good old Maria Corina Machado. Today she was not allowed to register her candidacy due to the government’s push to have her barred from public office. So, instead, she announced that her replacement candidate would be Sociologist Isabel Pereira. I didn’t know much about Pereira before today, but from the looks of it, she brings…
The recent decision by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal, ordering Copei to put in place a board consisting of people they selected, presents a difficult conundrum for the opposition coalition, the MUD. The key thing here is that the Supreme Tribunal has ordered the Elections Council to only accept the roster of candidates the new Copei board proposes. Indirectly,…
It’s become commonplace: our highest court gets involved in the internal affairs of political parties. This week the gauntlet fell on two more: Bandera Roja (Red Flag), a once guerrilla group that decided eventually to replace the armed struggle for the electoral one, and Christian Democratic party COPEI, one of the main Venezuelan political parties of the pre-Chavez era. On…
CC commenter Syd asked this question in the previous post: “Does Maria Corina Machado lead a political party?” The answer is both yes and no. Confused? Then, allow me to explain. It does exist, but isn’t allowed yet to participate in any election (at least on its own). Why? Well… it’s a long story. Two…
On Tuesday the CNE – our very neutral elections authority – explained that the gender quota would not apply to the candidates elected in the primaries. Seems like someone in the government party did some number crunching. As Eugenio Martinez explains in Prodavinci, only 28 women from a total 113 districts were elected in the PSUV primaries. If the…
The People’s Electoral Movement (MEP) – the largely empty carcass of AD’s left-wing faction that broke away from the party in the 60s – recently held its internal national assembly to elect its main authorities. In that context, Chairman Andrés Lusiano Lara and Secretary-General Wilmer Nolasco were ratified, along with the rest of its main board and other…
The outbreak of arbitrary elections disqualifications continues, as the Venezuelan government goes all in on that old democratic dictum: if you can’t beat ’em, ban ’em. Now it’s former Zulia State governor Pablo Pérez, disqualified from office for TEN YEARS on some flimsy excuse. It’s the third high-profile disqualification this week. It’s enough to give you…
We are three weeks into the race for the parliamentary elections (scheduled for December 6th) and the Venezuelan government has already imposed three over-the-top hurdles for the opposition. First, the Elections Council (CNE) issued a set of rules establishing a gender quota which they knew the opposition didn’t have. This was a genius move, because…
Yesterday, Maria Corina Machado offered a press conference to react to the Comptroller-General’s decision to bar her from holding public office for 12 months, which would leave her out of December 6th’s legislative election. Machado said that the formal reason given for her punishment is that she failed to declare her CestaTickets (a kind of private food-stamp often included…
Maria Corina Machado received today this paper from the Comptroller-General’s office, informing her that she’s declared ineligible to hold any public post for the next twelve months, therefore barring her of running in the December 6th legislative election. The picture of the document’s first page doesn’t say the specific reasons of why she has been…
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