CNE upheaval in Venezuela
June 20, 2023
Last week, the president of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) Pedro Calzadilla announced he would resign along with the other government-loyal members of the electoral authority, ahead of a 2024 presidential election. (Reuters)
The government-controlled National Assembly then announced it would replace the entire CNE (five board members and 10 alternates)— and named President Nicolás Maduro’s wife Cilia Flores as a member of the new nominating commission. (AFP)
The move prompted one of the two opposition CNE board members, Roberto Picón to resign, yesterday, “not to validate a situation that is clearly irregular, but to facilitate a process that must be conducted transparently.” (Associated Press)
The CNE upheaval came weeks after the opposition Plataforma Unitaria coalition requested technical assistance from the CNE to organize its primary. (El País)
Venezuela’s main opposition parties said they will organize their own presidential primaries independently the country’s electoral authority. This means the opposition will have to fund the process itself, and secure access to hundreds of polling centers across the country by October, reports Bloomberg.
Those who resigned are Maduro government loyalists, and the opposition feared the move could delay the process of getting its vote organized as Maduro’s government begins the process of selecting replacements.
The outgoing 15-person CNE board was named in 2021 after a political negotiation that was welcomed by the international community, and had two opposition representatives. The CNE organized the November 2021 regional elections, which European Union observers — monitoring polls there for the first time in 15 years — reported had irregularities despite finding "better conditions.” (AFP)
“The discussion about the new CNE in Venezuela shows that those in power take advantage of the false perception of normality to play that there are institutions that are governed by law,” The Dialogue’s Tamara Taraciuk told Runrunes.
More Venezuela
A total of 24.800 Venezuelans living abroad have registered with an opposition-created portal for migrants to be able to participate in the October primary. (Infobae)
Lawyer and trans activist Tamara Adrián is one of the candidates in this year's opposition primaries representing a recently formed political movement called Unidos por la Dignidad, reports Nacla.
Venezuela’s inflation increased in May, consumer prices rose 5.1 percent, breaking a three-month slowdown, reports Bloomberg.
Regional Relations
China and Cuba are negotiating to establish a new joint military training facility on the island, reports the Wall Street Journal. U.S. officials cited in the piece said reference to the proposed new training facility in Cuba is contained in highly classified new U.S. intelligence. Discussions for the facility on Cuba’s northern coast are at an advanced stage but not concluded, according to the article.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle for a new eavesdropping site in Cuba. The U.S. government subsequently declassified intelligence to confirm publicly that Chinese intelligence collection facilities have existed in Cuba since at least 2019. (Wall Street Journal)
Honduras
Gabriela Castellanos, the director Hondura’s National Anti-Corruption Council, has fled the country with her family over threats she received in the month since publishing a report on nepotism inside the administration of President Xiomara Castro. (Associated Press)
Guatemala
Guatemala’s upcoming elections will be held in a context of authoritarian slide, particularly attacks against anti-corruption actors and journalists. BBC Mundo interviews Juan Francisco Sandoval, an exiled former corruption prosecutor, and Jordán Rodas, the exiled former human rights ombudsman and vice presidential candidate for the Movimiento para la Liberación de los Pueblos ticket, which was disqualified by electoral authorities. (See yesterday’s post.)
InSight Crime profiles Guatemalan lawmaker Sofía Hernández, “one of a host of election candidates with questionable ties to organized crime in a country where traffickers have long understood the importance of forging political alliances.”
Ecuador
Six people were killed and eight wounded in an apparent gang shootout in Guayaquil. It is second mass shooting in the Ecuadorean city this month, reports AFP.
There are eight presidential candidates for Ecuador’s August snap elections. Luisa González, representing former President Rafael Correa’s Revolución Ciudadana, is broadly seen as a leading candidate. “Opinions are more divided on the issue of how she would fare in the event of a runoff,” according to CEPR’s Ecuador News Roundup.
Ecuadorean voters essentially face three distinct paths: a return to the neo-Keynesian policies of Correa’s 2007–2017 administration that significantly reduced poverty and wealth inequality but trampled dissent; a continuation of Lasso’s neoliberal policies that have harmed the poor and increased insecurity, embodied by economist Jan Topic; or a turn to Indigenous activist Yaku Pérez’s environmentalism, argues Marc Becker in Nacla.
Topic is a millennial, millionaire businessman, who characterizes himself as anti-politics. His main proposal is implementing a “Bukele Model” security policy — he has started campaigning in army camouflage gear, backed by Top Gun music, reports El País.
Brazil
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has a 37% approval rating and a 27% disapproval rating, six months after assuming office, according to a Datafolha poll released Saturday. (Reuters)
One of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro's closest aides sought legal advice for a military intervention that would have prevented the handover of power following last October's election, federal police said on Friday. (Reuters)
Guyana
In Guyana, ExxonMobil, the company extracting oil from the country’s off-shore wells, and the government, have become increasingly intertwined: “Where the company ends and the government begins is increasingly unclear,” reports The Intercept.
The oil PR blitz has included Exxon sponsorship of Guyana’s cricket team, and luring away journalists working on the oil and gas beat away from the country’s papers and into corporate public relations and state-run newsrooms. (The Intercept)
Argentina
Argentina holds general elections in October, but many of the country’s provinces are holding elections in the lead-up, fodder for endless political analysis and extrapolation. Abstention and null votes in the thirteen provinces that have voted thus far increased by eight percent over the 2019 elections. Participation decreased by an average of five percent, according to a Centro de Investigación para la Calidad Democrática study for Cenital.
Bolivia
Chinese battery giant CATL confirmed a $1.4 billion investment to help develop Bolivia's huge but largely untapped reserves of lithium, following a partnership with the government made in January. (Reuters)
Mexico
Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced he will sign an agreement this week with makers of the country's food staple tortillas that ensures they only use non-genetically modified (GM) white corn while also setting new tariffs on imports of the grain. (Reuters)
AMLO is wildly popular, and “although he cannot run for reelection, several recent moves suggest the president believes his popularity will allow him to continue to dictate policy well after he leaves office,” writes Alejandra Soto in Americas Quarterly.
Colombia
Colombian President Gustavo Petro's shunning of fossil fuels is not helping improve the country’s environmental status — and his government’s policies are keeping the country from a transition to renewables, argues Marina Palau in Americas Quarterly.
On a recent visit to Kenya, Colombian Vice President, Francia Márquez, announced that Swahili will soon be offered as a foreign language option in schools. The project would permit teachers from African countries to teach in Colombia, as well as for Colombians to teach Spanish on the continent, reports the BBC.