The United States is considering imposing sanctions on Venezuela after the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado is ineligible to run in this year’s presidential elections, Matthew Miller, spokesman for the US State Department, said on Saturday.
Miller said that Washington, which announced in mid-October an easing of its sanctions imposed on Caracas in the gas and oil sectors, is “reviewing its sanctions policy (…) based on this development and the recent political targeting of democratic opposition candidates and civil society” in Venezuela.
Washington considered that the decision of the Supreme Court in Venezuela, which banned Machado from holding public office for 15 years while she is “a winner of the opposition’s democratic primaries,” “is not consistent with the commitment to organize fair presidential elections in 2024.”
Miller pointed out that Marina Corina Machado “was not informed of the accusations against her and was unable to respond to them.”
The Maduro government and the opposition agreed, during talks in Barbados last year, to hold free and fair presidential elections in 2024 in the presence of international observers.
Yesterday, Friday, the Supreme Court of Venezuela made clear that Machado would remain incompetent “due to her involvement… in the corruption conspiracy masterminded by Juan Guaido.”
Dozens of countries recognized Guaido, who is now in exile, as the legitimate winner of the 2018 elections, which Maduro won for a second term.
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