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Soriek  6mo ago (text post)   950 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 23

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum might be interested in. I’m increasingly doing more coverage of countries we’re likely to have a userbase living in, or just that I think our userbase would be more interested in. This does mean going a little outside of my comfort zone and I’ll probably make mistakes, so chime in where you see any. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Venezuela

Last week I reported on America lifting sanctions on Venezuela in exchange for them holding free and fair elections. It hasn’t gotten off to a great start. Venezuela hasn’t yet reversed their decision to [edit: not] allow the popular opposition figure María Corina Machado to run in the election (formally they have until November to do this), and the opposition primary was filled with stories of government obstruction, including voting centers having to be physically relocated due to intimidation:

The election in this South American nation of roughly 28 million people took place with no official government support. Instead, the vote was organized by civil society, with polling stations in homes, parks and the offices of opposition parties.

About 2.3 million Venezuelans turned out to vote, the election commission said, a fairly high number that could indicate how engaged voters could be in a general election in 2024. The government’s telecommunications agency shut down an online guide that showed Venezuelans the location of their nearest polling station, and prohibited radio and television stations from covering the vote — a move that was denounced by the country’s journalists union.

However, the primary did go through and with the ballots counted up Machado won overwhelmingly against the nine other candidates. This follows a trend of her rising popularity and other main competitors bowing out and endorsing her, including the former opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Formal elections will be held sometime in late 2024 that has yet to be agreed upon. Keep in mind she got roughly 2 million votes out of a country of 28 million, and in the last (in many ways unfair) election Maduro got about 6 million, although it’s hard to compare a primary to a general election.

I think you have this backwards. Venezuela won't allow Machado to run and the US wants her to be allowed.

What in my comment sounded like I was saying something else?

Venezuela hasn’t yet reversed their decision to allow the popular opposition figure María Corina Machado to run in the election

Venezuela's decision was to not allow her to run, not to allow her to run. This was very confusing as someone not already familiar with the situation and I had to look up other sources to figure out what you were trying to say.

Ahh I see why that was confusing, my fault for sloppy wording there.

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