María Corina Machado names Corina Yoris as opposition candidate to face Maduro in upcoming elections

2024-03-23 00:33:00
Corina Yoris Villasana speaks with María Corina Machado (REUTERS/Gaby Oraa)

Corina Yoris, a Venezuelan philosopher and university professor, was the candidate designated this Friday by opposition leader María Corina Machado to face President Nicolás Maduro, who will seek a third term in the July 28 elections.

The opposition has until March 25 to register a replacement for Machado, a favorite in the polls but disqualified from holding public office for 15 years, a sanction that she rejects as illegal.

“He is a person of my complete confidence, honorable, who is going to complete this process with the support and trust of everyone,” Machado said in a press conference when announcing Yoris’s name. “Here we go together. We are a great team”.

Maria Corina Machado poses with Corina Yoris (REUTERS/Gaby Oraa)

“I feel not only proud, but committed to the people and to María Corina, this act of trust, placing that challenge in me has seemed like a kindness and a unique detachment,” said the teacher, while dozens of followers shouted “Vote Cori, vote Cori!”

Experts agree that Machado, with 70% acceptance in some surveys, has high transfer power, which could boost the candidacy of the replacement he names. In fact, he has insisted that he will continue to lead the campaign.

The application period for the elections closes next Monday.

Yoris, a graduate in Philosophy and Letters, and a doctor in History, was also a member of the commission that organized the primary elections on October 22, in which Machado won more than 90% of the votes.

Machado has insisted that he will continue fighting to reverse his disqualification and enter the race at the last minute, taking Yoris’ place.

It is unlikely: the Supreme Court, with a pro-government line, ratified the sanction and in recent days the authorities arrested seven collaborators and the same number have an arrest warrant, including his right hand, Magalli Meda, who appeared as a possible replacement.

Machado and his team were linked to “destabilizing actions,” although the prosecution did not file charges against the 56-year-old liberal opponent.

“The regime knows it is lost. The regime knows that the people are with us,” Machado insisted. “We all know that we are an immense majority that grows every day and that we are willing to do everything that needs to be done for Venezuela, for our children, for our freedom.”

Maduro aspires to a third six-year term. The president came to power in 2013, after the death of Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), and was re-elected in 2018 in disputed elections, under suspicion of fraud.

Machado insisted that Yoris’s name is clean before the National Electoral Council (CNE), also accused of serving Chavismo. She has not held public office, so in theory she should not be politically disqualified.

Candidate nominations are made in an automated CNE system, to which the opposition claims it has not been able to access.

If this is achieved and if they nominate Yoris, the CNE has to give its approval for her to officially become a candidate. If she rejects it, no other name can be submitted.

After a kind of ‘razzia’ by the electoral authority, the opposition has only two authorized partisan ballots: that of the MUD, the old alliance replaced by the current Unitary Platform (PUD), and that of Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT). , by Manuel Rosales, who faced Hugo Chávez in the 2006 presidential election, was in exile in Peru and is now governor of the oil-producing state of Zulia (west).

This translates into just two candidates.

Some organizations from the alliance that supports Maduro in these elections have already gone to the CNE to nominate their name, but the governmental United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), chaired by Maduro, has not yet formalized its candidacy.

Politicians who call themselves anti-Chavist but who the opposition accuses of collaborating with Chavismo, have been the first to register.

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