A thousand demonstrators gathered on Saturday, December 4, in the Venezuelan state of Barinas, stronghold of former President Hugo Chavez, to protest against the Supreme Court’s decision to order a new election of the governor after having disqualified the candidate of the opposition given winner.
“Be proud because you have been able to face the impossible and we have succeeded in defeating Chavismo”said Freddy Superlano, leading the poll with 37.60% of the vote ahead of outgoing governor and Hugo Chavez’s older brother Argenis Chavez, credited with 37.21%.
Barinas, which has 970,000 inhabitants, was the only one of the 23 Venezuelan states where the results of the regional ballot on November 21 had not been formalized. It was ruled by Hugo de Los Reyes Chavez, Hugo Chavez’s father, from 1998 to 2008, then by Adan Chavez, a brother of the late ex-president, until 2017, the year of the election of Argenis Chavez.
On Monday, the Venezuelan justice canceled the ballot, on the grounds that Freddy Superlano was ineligible, according to an injunction of August 17 from the Comptroller General of the Republic, responsible for monitoring the management of public funds.
“More unity”
Accompanied on Saturday by the leader of the opposition, Juan Guaido, Freddy Superlano announced the candidacy of his wife, Aurora de Superlano, 32, in the new ballot, scheduled for January 9.
“The best guarantee is unity, more unity, better unity, more participation, it is the people in the streets, it is the protest, it is demanding our rights to go out [Nicolas] Maduro “, declared Juan Guaido, recognized as interim president by some fifty countries which denounced the conditions of the re-election, in 2018, of Nicolas Maduro.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling, Argenis Chavez resigned his governorship and announced that he would not stand for re-election, leaving his party to nominate another candidate.
Supporters of President Maduro won 19 of the 23 states at stake in this regional election, which marked the return of the opposition to the polls since the contested re-election of Nicolas Maduro in the presidential election in 2018.