Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): The opposition claimed that state resources had been used to finance the internal elections held by President Hugo Chavez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), and vowed to go on fighting Comptroller General Clodosbaldo Russian's ban on 400 people from standing at November's regional elections.
The accusation that public funds had been misused was leveled by Movement Towards Socialism (MAS), and echoed by the Social Christians of Copei.
Un Nuevo Tiempo (UNT) and Alianza Bravo Pueblo joined forces to complain to the National Electoral Council (CNE) that state-run Channel 8 had recently spent up to 80 percent of its transmission time on Chávez or the PSUV. Chacao Mayor Leopoldo Lopez, one of the targets of Russian's ban, said he would register as a candidate regardless. Russian claimed the CNE would have no choice but to disallow barred candidates.
Whether CNE president Tibisay Lucena would agree is a moot point ... her initial reaction to Russian's move was to say ruling on those concerned -- the so-called inhabilitados -- wasn't her job and referred them to the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ). Opinion on the CNE board on the ban is said to be mixed. UNT Secretary General Gerardo Blyde dismissed the ban and said the party would press on fighting for the inhabitados. It wasn't just the candidates but also the voters whose rights Russian was trying to remove, he said.
More details emerged of the results of the PSUV trickled out. It emerged that former two-times minister and army commander Jorge Luis Garcia Carneiro had prevailed in the contest to be nominated candidate for governor of Vargas state, even though he got only 12,716 votes in the populous state.
Outgoing Libertador municipal mayor Freddy Bernal had been widely tipped to win, not least after Chavez had signaled the candidate as his preferred choice. But in the event, Bernal got only 6,509 votes or just 20.6 percent of the total.
- Garcia Carneiro's vote may have been relatively small, but it worked out at 40.25 percent. Under party rules, he got the slot by having a margin of more than 15 percent over Bernal.
In contrast, former information minister Willian Lara got the biggest vote in Guarico state but not by a big enough margin. He's waiting to see whether the top echelon will opt for him when final lists are announced.
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