Venezuela Bans a Top Opposition Figure From Public Office

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime on Friday barred opposition figure María Corina Machado, a conservative who had been drawing energetic crowds on the campaign trail, from running in presidential elections expected next year.

“I’m not sorry nor surprised nor worried,” Machado, a 55-year-old politician and activist, said via text message to The Wall Street Journal shortly after the ruling. “We knew that they were going to do it. It is a big mistake on their part.”

The decision by the Comptroller’s Office dims already faint prospects for free and fair elections in 2024. Biden administration officials have repeatedly said that the Maduro government must organize democratic elections for Washington to lift sanctions against regime officials and the country’s lifeblood oil industry. 

Maduro’s government has barred other politicians who had been popular in polls from campaigning and holding office, most notably Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate. The regime has often made vague assertions of irregularities or corruption for prohibiting politicians from running.

“We condemn the prohibition of @MariaCorinaYa,” Juanita Goebertus, director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, the New York-based group, said on her Twitter account. “This decision violates her political rights and those of the Venezuelan people. The international community, especially those governments with access to Maduro, should request that this very serious decision be reversed.

In prohibiting Machado from holding office for 15 years, the Comptroller’s Office cited alleged corruption and her support for a U.S.-backed Venezuelan opposition movement that has used economic sanctions to dislodge Maduro. Machado, who is well-known among politicians in Washington and other capitals, has been open about supporting efforts to unseat Maduro.

Machado’s actions are an “affront to public ethics, administrative morality, the state of law, peace and sovereignty,” the Comptroller’s office said in a five-page letter dated June 27 and made public by a pro-regime lawmaker.  The letter accuses Machado of working with the opposition to cut off the Maduro administration’s access to foreign bank accounts and overseas assets, including U.S. refiner Citgo Petroleum Corp., and gold bullion at the Bank of England, leaving them vulnerable to creditors that are seeking to recoup billions of dollars in debts from Caracas. 

In recent polls, Machado, who comes from a wealthy family of industrialists, has led a pool of some 14 opposition presidential hopefuls ahead of October primaries the opposition had scheduled to pick a single presidential candidate. The Caracas consulting firm Poder y Estrategia said a poll done in early June showed that Machado had the support of 57% of respondents who planned to cast a ballot in the primaries.

Machado will still be able to participate in the primaries because the opposition is organizing them independently of the regime-controlled National Electoral Council. But Friday’s ban will prohibit Machado from facing off against the regime’s eventual candidate, who is widely expected to be Maduro. A date for the presidential election has yet to be set.

The government’s prohibition against running underscores its determination to avoid an opening for an opposition politician to win in an election, said Eduardo Battistini, president of Venezuela’s First Justice Party in exile.

“Today, by barring Maria Corina Machado as they have dozens of opponents, they are removing those who propose change in Venezuela,” he said.

Machado has been barred by the Maduro regime from leaving the country since 2015, when the Comptroller first banned her from political office for 12 months. Friday’s announcement increased that ban to 15 years. 

In recent weeks, she had been campaigning around the country, including in the cattle-growing heartland of Venezuela, long a Socialist Party stronghold. She pledged to dismantle a state-led economic model that has driven the oil-rich nation into financial ruin. And unlike other opposition politicians, Machado also said she wanted to privatize state energy giant Petróleos de Venezuela SA.

Pollsters and political analysts say that Venezuela’s opposition movement has faced widespread voter apathy since its leadership voted in December to remove Juan Guaidó as its leader. The U.S. and its allies had since 2019 recognized him as Venezuela’s legitimate president because they had deemed the 2018 election that Maduro had won as fraudulent.

Write to Juan Forero at [email protected] and Kejal Vyas at [email protected]