Venezuela: Brazil condemned Nicolás Maduro’s offensive against the opposition for the first time and forced him to retreat

As expected, the Chavista regime prevented the registration of the candidacy of Corina Yoris, designated as a unitary candidate to replace María Corina Machado, banned by the regime to facilitate the re-election of Nicolás Maduro in the July 28 elections. The measure unleashed a wave of international condemnation that for the first time also included Brazil, a hard blow for Caracas. The regime reacted by extending the system for a few hours and allow the alternative registration of the journalist of the newspaper El Nacional, Edmundo González Urrutia, former diplomat, but without a political career beyond his work as an analyst.

Omar Barboza, executive secretary of the Platform, favored according to polls to put an end to 25 years of control by Chavismo, had indicated that since last Thursday, when the registration of candidates was opened, “they have not allowed us to access the candidacy system ”. The deadline expired on March 25 at midnight. The torrent of repudiations, which in addition to Brazil also included the other Colombian ally, forced the trial to be postponed. But the bans were not lifted and the candidate chosen by Corina Machado was not admitted.

The opposition alliance that encompasses the leader’s strength, stated that the candidacy of the journalist González Urrutia It is a tool to reserve space for candidacyfrom Monday, he can be replaced, provided he does not incur any administrative sanctions or impediments provided for by justice aligned with the regime.

The main background of this conflict occurred after noon, when the Itamaraty Palace, the Brazilian Chancellery, He harshly rebuked Chavista operations against the opposition which prevent “the normalization of political life and the strengthening of democracy in Venezuela”.

“Based on available information, it is noted that the candidate nominated by the Unitary Platform (Corina Yoris), against whom there have been no judicial decisions, was prevented from registering, which is not compatible with the Barbados agreements. So far the impediment has not received any official explanation,” explains Lula’s Foreign Minister. The reference is to the pacts between Chavismo and the opposition in which Brazil, the EU and the USA also intervened for a democratic opening with free elections, release of political prisoners and lifting of bans.

Since Lula came to power, Brazil has had a complacent attitude towards the Venezuelan regime, denying accusations of abuse against Maduro, whom it had welcomed as an equal in Brasilia. But this attitude has cost the Brazilian market prestige among its voters., mostly middle class downtown. This year, Brazil will hold key municipal elections in October, where the ruling party needs a resounding victory to build alliances ahead of the 2026 presidential election.

As anticipated in a newspaper article State of Sao Paulo, Lula’s government “is irritated” by the Chavista position which has ignored the Barbados agreement, has incessantly intensified the arrests and persecution of opposition leaders and leaders of human rights organizations and has only allowed the candidacy of leaders who did not pose a danger to the country. Maduro’s continuity. Among them is the governor of the state of Zulia, Manuel Rosales, who Corina Machado believes is playing adversary.

Regional tensions

Tension with Brazil risks worsening. According to sources cited by that newspaper, Lula considers publicly criticizing Maduro, which would constitute an unprecedented gesture that would increase the isolation of the Chavista regime. The president, his advisor for international affairs, Celso Amorim, and the foreign minister, Mauro Vieira, have discussed the issue in the last few hours. This decision is supported by the loss of popularity just confirmed by three polls, despite the good economic results. There is no longer any political or diplomatic space to relativize Maduro’s “abuses”, a government source told Estadao.

Lula has a history of relativizing the Venezuelan dictatorship, the newspaper recalls, which is what his voters accuse him of. At the beginning of March, when asked about the veto on María Corina’s participation in the electoral dispute, the president compared the episode with the ban imposed on him from running for residency in 2018. “They stopped me from running for election in 2018. Crying, I nominated another candidate and he ran for election,” he said at the time.

Last year he received Maduro with great fanfare in Brasilia, during a meeting of South American leaders, which was harshly criticized by the centre-left and centre-right governments of the region, such as Chile and Uruguay.

According to analysts, the vulnerability of the regime, which has failed to consolidate its support base, forced it to do so imitate the model of Daniel Ortega’s Nicaraguan dictatorship which affected all the opposition, even taking the appellants to prison. Caracas is moving in this direction with the real risk that next April the United States will reinstate the economic sanctions that they had lifted in October in favor of the Barbados agreement. These sanctions were imposed after the fraud scandal in the 2018 elections in which the Chavista leader managed to be re-elected.

In those elections, its main candidate was Rosales himself, hence the distance of the opposition alliance with that nomination.

Meanwhile, Corina Machado warned on Tuesday that she will continue her presidential election campaign anyway without explaining how it will be done. The regime uses a gassy assassination attempt as a pretext to arrest the former MP’s main collaborators and it is not excluded that she too could end up in prison.