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.
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
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
RSS