By Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas
CARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela’s opposition said on Wednesday it will hold a presidential primary on Oct. 22 to choose a candidate to face the ruling party in presidential elections tentatively scheduled for 2024.
The primary is the opposition’s first since 2012. It hopes to rally supporters after years of futile attempts to unseat the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, but it faces deep voter apathy, among other challenges.
The next move is for the 10-person opposition committee tasked with scheduling the vote to meet with the country’s National Electoral Council, Jesus Maria Casal, the head of the council, told journalists. He did not give a date for when that would happen.
“We’re going to demand voting centers… it’s a question of rights,” Casal said.
At least a dozen people from various opposition parties have said they will run in the primary, including some who are barred from participating in politics by judicial rulings the opposition considers undemocratic.
One of those barred is former state governor Henrique Capriles, who won the opposition’s last primary over a decade ago, before losing the 2012 presidential vote to late former President Hugo Chavez.
Chavez’s protege Maduro beat Capriles by a much-narrower margin in another vote in 2013.
The main coalition of opposition parties boycotted the 2018 presidential vote when Maduro won re-election, a victory which they and countries including the United States consider fraudulent.
Maduro, who is enjoying renewed relations with neighbors Colombia and Brazil and some loosened U.S. restrictions on the oil industry, has not yet set a date for the 2024 vote and has intimated it could be moved earlier.
The opposition, which has been repeatedly fractured by in-fighting, recently named a new three-person leadership for their parallel legislature, replacing the former interim government of Juan Guaido.
(Reporting by Vivian Sequera, Mayela Armas and Deisy Buitrago; Writing by Oliver Griffin; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
