CARACAS – Some 600 delegates from the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) ratified on Friday President Nicolás Maduro as his candidate for the upcoming presidential elections, which by decision of the National Constituent Assembly will be held before May.
“Approved by acclamation and unanimously, fellow president. You are officially the candidate of the PSUV, “confirmed the first vice-president of this party, Diosdado Cabello, after asking the delegates, during the plenary of the III Congress of this movement, if they were in agreement with the nomination.
Cabello gave Maduro the party’s banner to go with him “through the streets to defend” the “party, the homeland and take it with all the honor it deserves.”
The ‘number two’ of Chavismo cited Maduro as a presidential candidate “on behalf of the militants and on behalf of this people, delegates of the congress and if you can say in the name of the commander Hugo Chávez.”
The National Constituent Assembly (ANC), plenipotentiary body composed only of Chavistas, decreed recently that the elections in the country will take place before May.
The ANC is not recognized by the opposition or by several governments, which consider it fraudulent because of the way in which it was elected and installed. The particular date and the conditions of the elections in general are some of the most complicated points in the negotiations that the Government and the opposition are holding in the Dominican Republic to seek a way out of the crisis that the country has been experiencing for months.
The opposition disagrees with these taking place in the first quarter of the year, since they believe that “fair” or “transparent” conditions can not be given.
