María Corina Machado announced this Friday in Caracas her resignation from participating in the 2024 presidential elections and has designated Corina Yoris as her successor, an academic with a low public profile who will receive all the political capital of the main opposition figure. A few days before the registration period closes, Machado has taken a step to her side due to her disqualification imposed by Chavismo, a movement that broad sectors of the opposition asked of her not to renounce the electoral route. The decision has been made in consensus with the entire Unitary Platform, so Yoris, from this very moment, becomes the main asset of the anti-Chavistas to defeat Nicolás Maduro at the polls, if this is possible in the system. authoritarian regime that governs Venezuela today.
The opposition has opted for an electoral tactic that consists of appointing candidates until Chavismo has to forcibly accept one of them, even if it is to maintain a minimum of forms before the international community. In the event that Yoris is disqualified, which would not surprise anyone, she would be followed by another name around which all anti-Chavismo will rally. And so on to infinity. This strategy – the most reasonable – was successful in the regional elections in Barinas, Hugo Chávez's native region. An opponent defeated Chávez's brother, a hard blow for Chavismo, but his election was annulled. The ruling party presented Jorge Arreaza, the commander's former son-in-law, in the replay to ensure victory. Not even like that. The opposition won again and now governs there. When that happened, many thought it was the ideal way to defeat Chavismo within the rules that they themselves control.
Yoris will carry out the registration process, which is done electronically and which until now has not been completed. The academic was a member of the organizing commission for the opposition primaries in 2023, in which Machado won 92% of the votes. She has a degree in Philosophy and Letters. She is also a professor at the Metropolitan University and was director of the Humanities and Education area of the postgraduate degree at the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB). She, in turn, is a member of the Inter-American Society of Philosophy and the Mexican Academy of Logic. She has been vice president for South America of the Ibero-American Philosophy Network and a few days ago she entered the Venezuelan Academy of Language with her own chair.
“We are on a path of transition and we have to travel it together,” said Yoris this Friday after his appointment in which his file in the electoral registry was projected on a screen, which shows that at the time of the announcement he did not have any type of disqualification from of the CNE. “They can try to disqualify me for calling me Corina,” the substitute joked.
The National Electoral Council has left only two cards for the opposition to run for the July presidential elections, that of the Democratic Unity Table and that of the Un Nuevo Tiempo party, with a moderate line but a member of the Unitary Platform. The opposition plans to nominate Yoris with both cards and assured that they were prepared for a possible blockage of Yoris. From Thursday until Monday the 25th, candidates for the presidency can register on the organization's platform. On this occasion, something that is not established in any regulation, the CNE has set schedules so that each candidate can enter the website through a code, a new virtual obstacle to hinder participation in the elections. At the time they are announcing the replacement, the representatives of the opposition bloc had not been able to register. Other candidates such as Luis Eduardo Fernández and Daniel Ceballos, from parties that have agreed with the Government, have been able to enter their names to be part of the July 28 race.
“The hours are passing and the regime uses this as a great maneuver to later say that there was no unity in the opposition. They believe that with these actions they are going to take us off the road, that they are going to blur our focus. This fight does not stop anyone,” Machado denounced the impossibility of registering the applications due to the cards available and that support it.
Faced with the obstacle posed by Machado's disqualification and the Government's refusal to comply with the Barbados agreements signed last October, in which it committed to authorizing all candidacies, the opposition has responded united. The leader began her tour of the country and this week, when the electoral schedule began to run, she left the door open on the scenario of a replacement. This week she held meetings with Un Nuevo Tiempo, whose leader, the governor of Zulia, Manuel Rosales, had also expressed his intention to be a presidential candidate. The differences over the alternative candidacy were finally settled within the Unitary Platform. “We have found a person I completely trust who will carry out this procedure and who gives us all confidence in his honorability. Everyone knows that my fight for my disqualification does not stop. Up to 10 days before the election you can make a substitution and here we will fight until the end. “I’m excited because we found the right person.”
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