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Venezuela Governor’s Election Ruling Sparks Outcry

Venezuela Governor’s Election Ruling Sparks Outcry

As votes were being tallied in a hotly contested governor’s race, Venezuela’s Supreme Court on Monday stepped in to abruptly prohibit opposition candidate Freddy Superlano from holding office, leading to accusations that the election was being stolen.

The governor’s race in Barinas holds great symbolic value for the leftist regime, because it is the birthplace of the late Hugo Chávez, the populist strongman whose 1998 election as president set Venezuela on a road to Socialism. His brother Argenis Chávez has held the governorship since 2017 and has sought reelection.

Electoral authorities in Caracas had said that the vote was too close to call since the Nov. 21 regional elections, which authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling party largely swept in a vote the Biden administration deemed unfair and undemocratic.

But with tension rising amid tallying delays in Barinas, the Supreme Court ordered national electoral officials to halt the counting of ballots. The court in a statement said it determined that Mr. Superlano, who had claimed victory, was banned from public office because of pending criminal charges for his role in opposing Mr. Maduro. The ruling appears to favor Mr. Chávez.

Freddy Superlano campaigning on the outskirts of Barinas, Venezuela, in 2017.

Photo: ricardo moraes/Reuters

In recent days, Mr. Maduro’s allies signaled they would not accept a loss in Barinas because of its ties to Mr. Chávez. In addition to Argenis Chávez, Mr. Chávez’s father, Hugo de los Reyes Chávez, and another brother, Adán Chavez, have served as governors in Barinas, giving the family control of the state since 1999.

“This has a spiritual value for us,” Diosdado Cabello, a senior Socialist Party leader, said in an address on state TV on Saturday. He pledged to legally challenge results favoring the opposition. “We don’t care what anyone says,” he added.

Critics called the move a brazen effort by the Maduro regime to steal the seat in Barinas, a largely rural state of cattle ranches and small towns that Hugo Chávez frequently venerated in his speeches.

“The regime is exposed for what it is, a vulgar dictatorship that snatches the will of the people who expressed themselves,” opposition leader Juan Guaidó said in a statement on Twitter.

Mr. Guaidó, who the U.S. has recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate president since 2019, said the court’s ruling reflects the lack of due process and the flawed electoral system in Venezuela. The concerns were raised by a European Union election observation team in a report in the wake of the vote.


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The EU mission, the first deployed to Venezuela in 15 years by the Europeans, noted the arbitrary disqualification of opposition candidates and the disproportionate use of government resources to benefit Socialist Party campaigns. State media outlets gave disproportionately favorable coverage of ruling party candidates while ignoring the opposition, the EU said. The mission also documented how pro-regime workers assisted voters nationwide at the ballot box, which the opposition says violates the secrecy of the vote.

Mr. Maduro responded angrily to the EU mission’s findings.

“They were trying to sully the electoral process,” Mr. Maduro said in a televised speech Sunday. “A delegation of spies—they weren’t observers—they wandered freely around the country, spying on social, economic and political life.”

The EU dismissed Mr. Maduro’s accusations and said the work of its election team was impartial.

The showdown in Barinas mirrors the battle for another state, Bolívar, where fraud allegations marred a 2017 governor’s race. Accusations of ballot manipulation and irregular voting procedures there and in Mr. Maduro’s 2018 presidential reelection led the U.S. and its allies to deem the president’s rule illegitimate.

Polls show that Mr. Maduro’s government has 15% national support and is widely reviled by Venezuelans, who blame it for corruption and mismanagement that has plunged the country into a long economic collapse from which it is only now emerging.

Mr. Maduro had claimed victory in Barinas on election night, when 10% of the state’s ballots had yet to be counted and less than 700 votes separated Mr. Superlano and Mr. Chávez. Since then, the National Electoral Council hasn’t issued any results for Barinas, though it did for other states.

Mr. Superlano was charged with conspiring against the government in late 2019 when he, then an opposition lawmaker, supported Mr. Guaidó’s efforts to challenge Mr. Maduro by creating an interim government with American backing.

Mr. Superlano later fled the country, as did many opposition figures who supported Mr. Guaidó.

But earlier this year, he was among more than two dozen opposition activists who returned from exile to run in gubernatorial and mayoral elections. Opposition leaders saw the election as an opportunity to rekindle a political movement that had failed to oust Mr. Maduro despite U.S. sanctions against the state oil industry and efforts to spur a military insurrection.

Mr. Superlano said he was consulting advisers on a possible response. The candidate said the tight race underscored mass rejection of the Chavez family’s rule in his state, which has been hamstrung by state takeover of land and an exodus of young farmworkers.

Venezuelan authorities have sought to prevent demonstrations by deploying the National Guard and antiriot police since Thursday across the state capital, which is also called Barinas.

“Today we’re in an environment that is absolutely militarized,” Mr. Superlano said in a news conference earlier in the day.

Write to Kejal Vyas at [email protected]

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Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuela-governors-election-ruling-sparks-outcry-11638234842