The penultimate electoral trap carried out by the Bolivarian revolution, the electoral disqualification of the conservative candidate María Corina Machado, has provoked a wave of support and support both inside and outside Venezuela. “The force that has awakened is not going to be intimidated by the desperate actions of the regime. On the contrary, this is gaining new and strengthened energy!” the conservative candidate responded to one of those messages of solidarity.

Machado not only led all the polls, but had managed to arouse the enthusiasm of the Venezuelan society, fed up with the internal struggles of the opposition and fed up with the ordeal he has suffered since the accession to power in 2013 of the “people’s president”.

“These measures issued by the Comptroller General of the Republic are unconstitutional and contrary to international standards on human rights. They are not an obstacle to participation in Primary Education,” certified the National Primary Education Commission (CNP), in charge of carrying out to a good port in the internal elections of the opposition, scheduled for October, in which it will be decided who is the rival of Nicolás Maduro in the 2024 presidential elections.

Precisely the majority of Machado’s rivals in those primaries publicly showed their solidarity with the coordinator of Vente Venezuela. “This disqualification, like ours and that of other opposition leaders, is illegitimate, unjustified and above all unconstitutional. Maduro and the institutions he controls follow the worst path of designing an election that will only bring more economic, social and political crisis,” protested Henrique Capriles, who fails to take off in the polls.

Both Capriles and Freddy Superlano, standard bearer of Voluntad Popular (VP) after the exile of Juan Guaidó, are also disqualified. Superlano was already taken from him at the end of 2021 by his electoral victory in the governorate of Barinas.

“These abuses of tyranny will not stop us. Venezuela is not giving up!” cried Andrés Velásquez, candidate for La Causa R.

Support also traveled the continent, including that of Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a Maduro ally since he came to power last year: “No administrative authority should take away the political rights of any citizen.”

Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS); the former presidents of Grupo Idea and the US government, among others, also showed their rejection, which gave rise to a very peculiar response from Caracas, which ignored the words of its Colombian ally and only criticized the “new attempted meddling” by Washington against the “robust participatory and protagonist democracy of Venezuela”.

In Europe, a group of MEPs warned hours before the Comptroller’s announcement of what was to come. In Spain, political leaders such as Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal joined the long list of solidarity with Venezuelan democracy.

The strategy implemented by Chavismo, which includes the imposition of a new electoral referee under the watchful eye of Cilia Flores, Maduro’s wife, is not new. It also includes the seizure of political parties to hand them over to allied leaders.

Nicaraguan Daniel Ortega, a close ally of Maduro, already imposed it by force before the 2021 presidential elections: seven opposition candidates ended up in jail. Any of them would have defeated him at the polls. The two revolutions know first hand this strategy, carried out by Vladimir Putin in the Russian elections.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project