Venezuela’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered opposition electoral officials not to destroy lists of voters following primary elections, a decision that was promptly condemned by opposition leaders who vowed to keep voters’ identities secret.
The court order was sought by Rafael Velasquez, a mayoral contender who lost in Sunday’s primary and called for the voter lists to be reviewed.
Opposition politicians said the decision appeared to be an attempt to intimidate adversaries of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
“The government is never going to be able to expropriate the vote of our people. It’s never going to be able to expropriate hope,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said during a speech Tuesday night at an event where he was formally proclaimed a presidential candidate.
Referring to the Supreme Court decision, Capriles said it appears to be part of an attempt to “instill fear.”
Capriles also focused his message on pledging a stronger economy and better schools, and on differentiating his candidacy from that of Chavez.
“Our government will be for everyone. The bus of progress has its doors open,” Capriles told the crowd, reading a prepared speech. On election day, he said: “It will be up to us to choose between two paths: the path of progress that you want, or the path of socialism that the government wants for you.”
The 39-year-old state governor will face Chavez in the Oct. 7 presidential election. Sunday’s primary vote also determined opposition candidates for state and local races across the country.
“The secrecy of the vote is a commitment, and we’re going to keep it,” opposition politician Leopoldo Lopez said in response to the ruling.
“There will be no court decision ... that will prevent what’s happening to keep happening: that more Venezuelans are joining,” he added.
After a failed 2004 recall vote against Chavez, a list of those who had petitioned for the election was leaked and widely circulated. Hundreds of people complained that after appearing on the list, they were fired from government jobs or prevented from working for the government.
Chavez’s government denied discriminating against those who appeared on that list.
The Supreme Court ruled that within 24 hours the books with voters’ names should be turned over to the National Electoral Council, the court said in a statement.
Velasquez told reporters that he had a right as a candidate to request a review of the lists of voters in the primary elections. Velasquez asserted there were irregularities, saying “it didn’t work as it should have.”
He didn’t publicly explain in detail why he thought it necessary to review the lists.
Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, who heads the opposition coalition, called the court’s decision “absurd.”
“After failed attempts by the government to sabotage the [election] day and to distort its significance, they turn to the ‘dossier of fear,’” Aveledo said in a statement.
He said many of the lists had already been destroyed.
However, opposition election chief Teresa Albanes said that not all of the lists had been destroyed.
Small clashes broke out between police and government opponents in the cities of Maracay and Barquisimeto on Tuesday as the authorities tried to detain members of the local election committees to seize voting materials. Officials did not immediately provide details about what occurred.
However, Lopez said that in Maracay, one young man died when he was hit accidentally by a police truck during a clash between police and government opponents who were protesting the detention of an election worker and the seizure of voter lists.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion