Maduro assures that there will be “total guarantees for everyone” in the 2024 presidential elections

Caracas, Nov 6 (EFE).- The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, assured this Monday that there will be “total guarantees for everyone” in the 2024 presidential elections and in the other elections that the country plans to hold in the coming years, when “Everyone will go out with their candidate to vote.”

“Next year there are presidential elections, in 2025 there are elections for the National Assembly, there are elections for mayor, there are elections for governors, (…) everyone will come out with their candidate to vote, congratulations to everyone, total guarantees for everyone,” he said during his program “Con Maduro +”, broadcast on the state channel VTV.

But now, he continued, is the time for “national unity” to defend the “historical rights” that – he affirmed – his country has over the Essequibo, a territory of almost 160,000 square kilometers in dispute with Guyana, over which Venezuela will hold a non-binding referendum on December 3, whose campaign began this Monday with “gigantic mobilizations” in “the 335 municipalities” of the nation.

“We cannot let anyone divide us in the great national cause of recovering the land that the liberators left us. It is not a problem that if you are from a party, a color, an ideology, here it is not a matter of that if you are supporting a certain candidate for governor, a certain mayor, a certain candidate for president, no, here we put all that aside, later there will be a chance,” he said.

Venezuela plans to hold the presidential elections in the second half of 2024, as agreed by the representatives in the dialogue between the ruling party and the opposition last October in Barbados, where they signed a “partial agreement on the promotion of political rights and electoral guarantees for all.” which contemplates, among other points, international observation.

Likewise, it establishes that “authorization will be promoted to all presidential candidates and political parties, as long as they meet the requirements established to participate in the presidential election, consistent with the procedures established in Venezuelan law.”

The opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) considers that the agreement should constitute a “route” for the lifting of the disqualifications that prevent various anti-Chavistas from holding elected positions, including former representative María Corina Machado, winner of the opposition primaries of the October 22, with 92.35% of the votes.

However, the ruling party has insisted that a person who is politically disqualified “cannot” be a candidate for the presidential election.