María Corina Machado challenges Chavismo and maintains her presidential candidacy despite the judicial veto

María Corina Machado insisted this Monday on maintaining her candidacy for this year's Venezuelan presidential elections despite the fact that Chavismo, through Jorge Rodríguez, the president of the Assembly, has confirmed that she is vetoed by the Supreme Court of Justice ( TSJ), a judicial body controlled by President Nicolás Maduro and his entourage.

The suspension of Machado, confirmed last week, has once again set off alarms in the international community, which had struggled so that, through the Barbados agreements between the parties, Venezuela would find a way out of its political crisis with the celebration of a free elections in which the opposition had a chance of victory.

Machado is the main candidate of anti-Chavismo and she leads Maduro in the polls that have been made public.

The opposition leader around whom the Unitary Platform has rallied has assured that she will not abandon the electoral race.

“The substitute candidate is the plan of those who do not want change,” said Machado, elected last October 22 with 92% of the votes in primaries in which more than two million people participated.

“Nicolás Maduro is not going to choose the people's candidate, because the people have already chosen who his candidate is.

The path is going to be full of obstacles and temptations and they are going to try to demoralize us, divide us and take us out of the spotlight, and that is what we cannot allow,” she said, surrounded by leaders of different political parties.

The process of agreements that Venezuela and the United States had reached to open a democratic path in the country had advanced in recent months, but it seems to be stalled again after the maneuver of Chavismo, which through an unconstitutional procedure prevents Machado from participating, under the accusation of being part of a corruption plot linked to the interim government of the leader in exile Juan Guaidó.

The United States became the catalyst of the negotiations by agreeing to a six-month easing of oil sanctions, in exchange for the release of American prisoners and the establishment of a mechanism to unblock political disqualifications, with which in recent years The Government has closed the way to its adversaries.

The main name on the table was Machado, the only candidate with real chances of defeating Chavismo.

Washington now says that the TSJ's decision on Machado and also on Henrique Capriles Radonski, who has also been prevented from competing, undermines democracy and has announced that it will review its sanctions policy.

Brussels has expressed itself in the same terms: “The European Union is very concerned about the recent events in Venezuela and the ratification by the Supreme Court of the disqualification of opposition politicians María Corina Machado and Henrique Capriles for the next presidential elections. .

Decisions aimed at preventing members of the opposition from exercising their fundamental political rights can only undermine democracy and the rule of law,” said EU Chief Spokesperson for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Peter Stano.

Brussels has asked that the parties return to the Barbados agreements, the same thing that the opposition representatives have said.

Chavismo has said that the TSJ's decision is res judicata and, therefore, irrevocable.

This Monday, the head of the Government delegation in the talks sponsored by Norway indicated that the dialogue with the opposition is in the process of "resuscitation" and announced that they are willing to take a next step towards the creation of the verification commission. agreements.

“A dialogue does not replace the laws of the Republic or the Constitution,” insisted the head of Parliament, who assured that there will be presidential elections in 2024.

Chavismo has denounced a series of alleged conspiracies to assassinate Nicolás Maduro in which it accuses opposition leaders and United States authorities of being involved.

This has led him to carry out a persecution of Machado's entourage that has ended with the imprisonment of five of his collaborators, who were missing for five days.

Maduro and the leadership in power have played hard again with the aim of staying in power.

The Barbados agreements, full of inaccuracies and open endings, seem to once again put the situation at a stalemate with few possibilities for democratization in Venezuela, where not only are free and transparent elections necessary, with international electoral observation, but also a re-institutionalization of all powers that are part of Maduro's political machinery.

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