Lula da Silva faces Nicolás Maduro again and assures that the opposition candidate’s veto “is serious”

The presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and France, Emmanuel Macron, said Thursday that obstacles to registering Corina Yoris’s opposition candidacy in Venezuela for July’s presidential election are “serious.”

Lula, who spoke to the press together with his French counterpart, on an official visit to Brazil, underlined that the fact that Yoris was unable to register as a candidate It is something that has no “political or legal” explanation.

“I don’t want anything better or worse for Venezuela, I want the elections to take place like in Brazil, with everyone’s participation,” the Brazilian president said.

At the Planalto Palace, the center-left leader recalled having met the Venezuelan head of state and candidate for re-election, Nicolás Maduro, on the sidelines of the recent international summits and having told him that “the most important thing was to restore normality and not have problems in the electoral process”.

In this sense, Lula underlined that the controversial disqualification weighing on María Corina Machado, winner of the opposition primaries held last year, does not represent an “aggravating factor” for the holding of the elections in Venezuela, scheduled for next July 28 .

“They also banned me from running when I came first in the polls (in 2018, a time when I was in prison for corruption convictions that were later annulled), and what did I do? I nominated another candidate and we lost the election, something that makes part of the democratic process,” explained the leader of the Brazilian Workers’ Party.

He was referring to Fernando Haddad, who is now his Economy Minister and was the presidential candidate in 2018, who was excluded from the race, defeated by far-right leader Jair Bolsonaro.

“It has no explanation”

Lula, however, defined it as “serious” that “the other candidate”, referring to Yoris, an eighty-year-old academic who has never acted in politics until now and who has no type of conflict with justice, was unable to register your aspiration.

According to the Venezuelan opposition, it was the Venezuelan electoral authorities who prevented Yoris from registering.

“It is something that has caused harm (…) There is no legal or political explanation for prohibiting an opponent from running for office. All opponents must be treated with the same conditions“said the Brazilian president.

For his part, Macron, who concluded a three-day visit to Brazil on Thursday, called the situation in Venezuela “serious” and warned that, in this context, the elections “cannot be considered democratic.”

“We strongly condemn the exclusion of the opposition candidate. The situation has therefore worsened,” declared the French head of state.

Source: EFE