Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has filled the remaining gaps in its list of candidates for governor in eight states, along with a further 126 contenders for election as municipal mayors across the country.
With this, the PSUV completed its nominations for the regional elections on November 23. But as National Assembly (AN) president Cilia Flores unveiled the final list, PSUV Vice President Alberto Müller Rojas informed party "militants" they would foot the bill for paying off debts owed to the National Electoral Council (CNE).
State television channel VTV's website put the debt at Bs.F.980 million excluding Sunday's primaries, which cost an estimated Bs.F.17 million. The CNE is said to have drawn up a timetable of four installments of Bs.F.230 million, all supposedly to be paid off before the elections in five and a half months' time. The figures suggest the PSUV will still be in debt with the CNE then.
As to the election lists, most of the slots for governor were filled with candidates of local rather than national repute.
The exception was in Guarico state, where the party leadership -- or President Hugo Chavez himself -- picked Willian Lara, a former minister who became a key figure in the PSUV's national electoral command.
Outgoing Governor Eduardo Manuitt, who's said to have been told not even to think about running, evidently isn't a gracious loser. He rejected the choice of Lara, whom he described as "a candidate of hate, of persecution, of manipulation" who didn't "represent the hope of change in the absolute."
Accusing Lara of taking advantage of his position in the party hierarchy, Manuitt said the candidate "expresses neither the unity nor the sentiment in this state." Opinion polls showed "a high degree of rejection" towards Lara, not only in Guárico but at the national level, "so bad is he as a candidate."
Manuitt's bitterness perhaps stemmed from Lara's position on the electoral command. One of their jobs was to weed out unwanted contenders before the primaries.
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