Elections for Venezuela’s state governorships are to be held next year rather than in December as expected, the election board said on Tuesday, giving the unpopular socialist government more breathing space before going to the polls.
Critics say authorities have delayed the elections — and are also seeking to derail an opposition push for a referendum to recall Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro — because they are frightened of letting Venezuelans have their say.
Maduro, who replaced the popular former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2013 after his death, has seen his ratings halve to just more than 20 percent amid a deep economic crisis in the OPEC nation.
Photo: AFP
The 23 state governors’ four-year terms were to end in early January, with elections anticipated for December.
However, Venezuelan National Election Board head Tibisay Lucena, who the opposition says is close to the government, said they would instead be held toward the middle of next year.
Although Lucena did not give reasons, government officials have said exceptional measures are justified because of a US-led “economic war” against them and the oil price crash.
“This decision by the election board is part of a dangerous trend by a regime clearly acting outside the constitution,” the opposition Democratic Unity coalition said.
With Chavez suffering from cancer, but having just won re-election himself, the socialists swept to victory in 20 states in the last regional elections in 2012.
However, opinion polls show they would fare badly in any election and government sources have said they are hoping for an oil price recovery to help them.
The opposition has pushed for a referendum this year to remove Maduro and trigger a presidential election.
However, even if they collect the 4 million signatures needed to trigger the plebiscite, in a drive later this month, such a vote could only take place next year.
Under Venezuela’s constitutional rules, that means that should Maduro lose a referendum next year, his vice president would take over rather than there being a new election, dashing the opposition’s hopes of ending 17 years of socialism.
Later on Tuesday, Maduro said that various opposition parties were at risk of losing their legal status and needed to renew their registry with the electoral board if they wanted to participate in next year’s state polls.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema