Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Comptroller General Clodosbaldo Russian's decision not to ban any more people from standing as candidates at the November elections appeared to catch the opposition unawares or at least by surprise.
Steps were afoot for a march next Saturday in protest against the Russian ban, which critics claim violates the Constitution and doesn't comply with the law.
The mainstream opposition parties carried on with the plan to march as if they either hadn't heard of Russian's move or didn't believe it.
The ban has complicated the opposition's self-set task of agreeing on single unity candidates for the elections at state and municipal level. Opinion is divided between plowing on regardless of the ban or complying with it by selecting new candidates to replace the inhabilitados
Party leaders still hadn't settled on which option to pursue when Russian announced his decision. Un Nuevo Tiempo, which favors fighting, said the opposition wasn't going to "commit suicide" by surrendering to the ban. At grass roots level, the reaction among opposition activists included barely disguised glee that, in their view, Russian had backed down from his statement on June 30 that more people would be added to his list between then and the elections.
Boxing metaphors were in the air. "We decked him," a long-standing member of the opposition happily declared to this reporter. "He's thrown in the towel," he added, overlooking the fact that the ban was still in force for 386 aspirant candidates already barred from standing. His younger but evidently less excitable companion was less triumphant in tone: "OK, we may have gotten him on the ropes, but he's not out, and the referee's not even started counting."
This pragmatist noted that the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ) had yet to rule on whether Russian's ban was even legal. Critics insist that people can only be barred if they've been convicted by a court.
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