Venezuelan Opposition Candidates Agree to Presidential Primaries

Súmate directors Alejandro Plaz and Maria Corina Machado
Credit: El Universal

Caracas, Venezuela, July 8, 2006—After much back and forth, nine of Venezuela’s 12 potential opposition candidates for the presidency have agreed to hold a primary election on August 13, to find a single “unity” candidate. The opposition NGO Súmate (Join up) will organize the primary vote. Teodoro Petkoff and Roberto Smith, two of the better known opposition candidates, though, refused to sign on to the primary process.

The decision to hold the primary is a reversal of what Súmate had announced last week, when they said that due to a lack of agreement among opposition candidates no primary could be organized in time for it to be held before the deadline for registering presidential candidates. Various opposition candidates, though, especially Julio Borges of Primero Justicia (Justice First) and Manuel Rosales, the governor of Venezuela’s largest state, Zulia, pleaded with Súmate to reconsider.

Súmate responded to the pleas by setting a deadline for Thursday, by which opposition candidates would have to formally agree to participate in the primary, for the group to organize the vote. Nine candidates signed up to participate “unequivocally”: Vicente Brito, Julio Borges, Sergio Omar Calderón, Pablo Medina, William Ojeda, Manuel Rosales, Cecilia Sosa, Froilán Barrios, and Enrique Tejera París.

Súmate’s directors, Alejandro Plaz and Maria Corina Machado made the announcement about the primary during a press conference yesterday. Súmate had previously said they would need at least six weeks to mobilize 50,000 volunteers and to print materials to carry out the primary vote.

Teodoro Petkoff, who was a Minister during the presidency of Rafael Caldera and who ran as a left-of-center candidate for President on several other occasions in the 1980’s, rejected Súmate’s deadline, saying that Súmate is “claiming for itself the right to dictate to political sectors and the presidential candidates how they should behave.” For Petkoff, Súmate acted “unadvisedly, severely, arrogantly, and authoritarian.”

Despite these strong words, Petkoff said that he is still interested in finding agreement with the other candidates in order to have a single “unity” candidate of the opposition for the December 3rd presidential election.

Roberto Smith, who also used to be a Minister under a previous president, Carlos Andrés Perez, and who has been actively campaigning for the presidency for nearly a year, said he would stay in the race for president until the very end.

Recent opinion polls show that the two strongest candidates to oppose President Hugo Chavez are Julio Borges and Manuel Rosales, who each gather around 30% of the vote against Chavez, while Chavez enjoys around 60% support.