Leading opposition candidates reach agreement on unified candidacy

June 5, 2006


The three
leading opposition candidates in the polls Julio Borges, Teodoro Petkoff and
Manuel Rosales (who has yet to announce), announced
today that they will find a way of choosing one of the three as a united opposition
candidate before July 31st. If they don’t, they will all participate
in the Sumate primary. They will create an independent commission to try to
find this consensus going forward. At the same time, they will integrate all
three campaign commands to create a joint proposal and a “governability” agreement
for the new Government. They said that they do not reject a primary offhand,
but would prefer a mechanism that shows there is indeed unit of purpose in
their goals.

They also
announced that they will not accept any conditions for the December election that
in any way worsens the conditions for the vote used in December 2005. This
means that the use of fingerprint machines is unacceptable. They also asked for
the CNE to consider both proposals to audit the electoral registry.

I believe
this is a positive announcement in the sense that it shows that their conversations
have indeed have been focused in leading to a consensus and unity. I still feel
that primaries would get the people excited and get them out of their doldrums,
which is badly needed at this time. At the same time, it does show a lot of
goodwill and maturity to attempt to reach that difficult decision by a consensual
mechanism, so they can spend their time showing the people what a mess this
country is in.

This entry was posted on June 5, 2006 at 8:18 pm and is filed under Venezuela.

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