Venezuelan opposition expresses confidence in electoral system and criticizes Nicolas Maduro’s tactics

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Caracas. Venezuelan presidential candidate Enrique Márquez has declared his confidence in the automated electoral system, ruled out the possibility of fraud in voting machines and accused the leftist Nicolas Maduro government of trying to prevent the vote.

“We believe in the automated election system and we are participating in its oversight. The system is working well and will work on July 28, the day of the presidential election,” Marquez said at a news conference on Tuesday.

Márquez served as opposition representative at the National Electoral Council from 2021 to 2023.

Although opinion polls show low voting intentions for him, experts see his candidacy as strategic, guaranteeing the opposition an option in the event that the candidacy of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado’s deputy and poll favorite Edmundo González Urrutia is disqualified.

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“We see how an entire country is committed to participation,” said Márquez, who criticized the “arrests of opposition leaders for participating in politics” in recent months.

The government’s goal is to cause abstention and a loss of credibility in the electoral process. He wants us to see that it is impossible to change the government through voting. But there is a prophecy and the people have got it. The people will express their opinions and change the government,” he said.

In these elections, Maduro, who has been in power since 2013, seeks re-election for six consecutive years, until 2031.

González Urrutia, a 74-year-old diplomat who has never run in an election, was nominated in a pinch after Machado was disqualified for political reasons and her designated replacement, Corina Yoris, was unable to register to run.