The Frente Amplio (FA) opposition coalition held neighbourhood assemblies today throughout the country to workshop ideas on how to confront the Maduro regime, and in particular how to mount a challenge to the upcoming May 20 presidential election.
At the assembly in the Chacao neighbourhood of Caracas, National Assembly deputy Alfonso Marquina spoke on the importance of disavowing the presidential election by pointing out that democratic nations around the world had already called the election “illegitimate”.
During the same event, National Assembly deputy Delsa Solorzano also spoke on the May 20 election, saying:
You vote when you can choose, when you can decide for which party to vote. [In the May 20 election] parties and politicians have been banned from running, and [we know that] the vote is not secret (…) we will not legitimate this electoral fraud.
Regime critics maintain that the May 20 presidential election is nothing but an attempt at a thin veneer of democratic legitimacy. The body in charge of organizing and conducting elections in Venezuela, the Consejo Nacional Electoral (CNE), is an unabashed pro-regime organization, making free and fair elections in Venezuela an impossibility. Most recently, the CNE was caught making up the results of the July 30 Constituent Assembly vote in a move that favoured the Maduro regime.
Aside from manipulating electoral results, the CNE has also banned the most popular opposition parties and politicians from running in the May 20 election, virtually setting up a one-man race.
Deputy Solorazano said that once Maduro wins the May 20 election, Venezuelans will
… witness [the birth] of a government that is not recognized by the region, and that will have economic and political implications.
Several regional countries have already stated that they will not recognize the result of the May 20 election, including Argentina, Panama, the United States, and Colombia.
The electoral campaign for the May 20 election formally begins tomorrow.
Created in early March, the FA is made up of political parties, civil society and religious groups that are opposed to the Maduro regime.
Maduro Travels to Cuba to Meet Diaz-Canel
Maduro traveled to Cuba yesterday to meet the island nation’s new president, Miguel Diaz-Canel, becoming the first foreign dignitary to do so. Diaz-Canel became the first non-Castro to rule revolutionary Cuba on Thursday.
Speaking to Cuban media upon his arrival, Maduro said that he wanted to speak to Diaz-Canel about “renewing hope, dreams and [to look] towards” the future of the Cuban-Venezuelan relationship.
Maduro also said:
We want to visualize the next ten years, what else we can do, what else we need to do for our Latin American and Caribbean people, to give deep and indestructible roots to our political, spiritual, moral, and above all economic union.
Below, an image of Venezuelan and Cuban dignitaries meeting in Havana yesterday. Maduro and Diaz-Canel are seated in the middle
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