CNE to begin registrations; Director says 'inhabilitados' won’t be accepted as candidates

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): The National Electoral Council (CNE) today begins the process of registering candidates for the state and municipal elections scheduled for November 23 amid contradictions over what attitude it would take towards aspirant candidates banned by Comptroller General Clodosbaldo Russian.

Officially, the CNE will not accept registrations from individuals on Russian's list. Several people on the list including Chacao Municipal Mayor Leopoldo Lopez have vowed they'll turn up and try anyway, if only to make a point about the ban -- and in the process put the supposedly autonomous and independent CNE on the spot.

CNE Director German Yepez said anyone on Russian's list of 'inhabilitados' wouldn't be registered as a candidate because they would be rejected by the automated system. In saying this, he tacitly admitted that the Russian list had already been fed into the CNE's computers. Yepez didn't say how many people were already in effect banned from standing as candidates. Russian's list was cut down to 272 individuals before he handed it over to the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ) and, presumably, the CNE as well.

Critics of the ban claim that the only individuals ineligible to run for elected office are those who've been convicted in court of committing a crime. People on Russian's list insist this doesn't apply in their cases. Given that roughly half of Venezuela's prison population of a little over 19,000 are behind bars serving jail sentences (the rest are in custody awaiting trial), this would put the number of people not allowed to vote at around 9,000, including those barred by Russian.

It would seem that while Yepez' view of the 'inhabilitados' is shared by CNE president Tibisay Lucena, it isn't universally held by all of his colleagues. Fellow CNE director Vicente Diaz reiterated his earlier opinion that the Russián ban was illegal. It had "no foundation in any Article of the Constitution, nor under any laws, nor the Penal Code, nor the Suffrage Law, nor the electoral power," he said.

Humberto Castillo, a member of the National Electoral Board -- the organization which actually runs elections -- appeared to try to dampen speculation that the vote could be delayed. Any alteration of the CNE's timetable would put the elections at risk, he said. Candidate registration is scheduled to close on August 25.