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Saturday, March 15, 2025

Opposition wins tense Venezuela vote in Chavez home region

by

1160 days ago
20220110
Sergio Garrido holds the flag of Barinas after defeating the government's candidate in the election for governor. [Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Sergio Garrido holds the flag of Barinas after defeating the government's candidate in the election for governor. [Manaure Quintero/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

 

■ The vote in Bari­nas, hailed by op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, marks the first vic­to­ry for the op­po­si­tion in 23 years ■

 

(AL JAZEERA) — Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion won an his­toric vic­to­ry in a tense re­run gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Bari­nas, a re­gion ruled by the fam­i­ly of late Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez for more than two decades.

Ac­cord­ing to re­sults an­nounced late on Sun­day, op­po­si­tion law­mak­er Ser­gio Gar­ri­do, 54, de­feat­ed the rul­ing par­ty’s can­di­date Jorge Ar­reaza, 48, who served as the coun­try’s vice pres­i­dent and for­eign min­is­ter and was Chavez’s son-in-law.

Gar­ri­do, who ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil (CNE) won 55.36 per­cent of the vote, wel­comed the re­sult.

“With the uni­ty and strength of each of you, we have suc­ceed­ed … suc­ceed­ed in over­com­ing ob­sta­cles and ad­ver­si­ty de­spite all that we have had to face,” Gar­ri­do wrote on Twit­ter.

Ar­reaza con­ced­ed de­feat be­fore the re­sults were an­nounced tweet­ing “we did not achieve the goal” of win­ning.

The re­run gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Bari­nas state, where Chavez’s fa­ther and broth­ers have held po­lit­i­cal pow­er since 1998, was con­duct­ed amid wide­spread claims of rul­ing par­ty in­ter­fer­ence.

An ini­tial elec­tion on No­vem­ber 21 was can­celled by a court af­ter it ap­peared to be go­ing the way of op­po­si­tion fig­ure Fred­dy Su­per­lano, mark­ing the first de­feat in Bari­nas in 23 years for the Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela (PSUV), now head­ed by Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which is one of many gov­ern­ment bod­ies seen as loy­al to Maduro’s gov­ern­ment, grant­ed a re­quest by the coun­try’s pub­lic fi­nances watch­dog to de­clare Su­per­lano “in­el­i­gi­ble” be­cause of “ad­min­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions” in­to ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and or­dered new elec­tions to be held with­out him.

Su­per­lano was dis­qual­i­fied on No­vem­ber 29 while he was ahead by less than a per­cent­age point over Ar­ge­nis Chávez, one of Hugo Chávez’s broth­ers. Su­per­lano’s wife, who was cho­sen as his suc­ces­sor, was dis­qual­i­fied, too.

Ar­ge­nis Chávez re­signed as gov­er­nor fol­low­ing Su­per­lano’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion and did not en­ter the race in the spe­cial elec­tion, leav­ing the gov­er­nor’s bal­lot free of a Chavez fam­i­ly mem­ber for the first time in more than two decades. The rul­ing par­ty then chose Ar­reaza as its can­di­date.

In pick­ing Ar­reaza, Maduro said the rul­ing par­ty need­ed a new can­di­date “to go to the res­cue”.

Be­fore dawn on Sun­day, gov­ern­ment lead­ers and rul­ing-par­ty sup­port­ers gath­ered in a ral­ly chant­i­ng, “Chávez lives, and in Bari­nas, the home­land con­tin­ues!”

Hugo Chavez re­mains pop­u­lar in Bari­nas for re­dis­trib­ut­ing the coun­try’s vast oil wealth to the poor, but al­so blamed for the coun­try’s now mis­er­able econ­o­my and sky-high crime rate.

Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, who is recog­nised by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er gov­ern­ments as Venezuela’s true pres­i­dent over Maduro, wel­comed the re­sult in Bari­nas on Sun­day night.

“Beau­ti­ful Bari­nas, where it start­ed, ends,” he tweet­ed, re­fer­ring to the cra­dle of Chav­is­mo. “Unit­ed we will de­fend the will of a pow­er­ful ma­jor­i­ty that will not sur­ren­der, nor will it, un­til we see democ­ra­cy again in Venezuela.”

Maduro’s 2018 re-elec­tion was re­ject­ed as il­le­git­i­mate by part of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

His par­ty won big in the No­vem­ber 21 vote, which Eu­ro­pean Union ob­servers said was marred by ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing the wide­spread use of state re­sources and “ar­bi­trary dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tions” of chal­lengers.

Maduro dis­missed the claims and called the mem­bers of the EU elec­toral mis­sion sent to ob­serve the polls “spies”.

electionOppositionPoliticsVenezuela


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