2023 Unitary Platform Presidential Primaries

The 2023 Unitary Platform presidential primaries were primary elections held on 22 October 2023, to choose the opposition candidate of the Unitary Platform coalition in the elections of the following year for the presidency of Venezuela. The first official announcement of the primaries was made on 16 May 2022 by the coalition, setting 2023 as the year in which such elections would be held. They were held in Venezuela, as well as in 29 countries and 77 cities abroad.

The primaries were independently organized by the National Primary Commission, without the assistance of the National Electoral Council and with the use of manual voting. Venezuelan NGOs and political parties have denounced the use of disinformation, death threats, and physical attacks by Chavismo supporters and by the National Liberation Army (ELN), a far-left Colombian guerrilla group, against opposition candidates.

Timeline

June

On 3 June 2023 a group of women identified with the ruling party insulted and physically assaulted pre-candidate Henrique Capriles during a visit to Santa Inés, Carabobo state, in an attempt to disrupt his campaign.

On 30 June 2023, the Comptroller General announced that pre-candidate and former National Assembly member María Corina Machado was disqualified from holding public office for 15 years, linking her to alleged crimes of Juan Guaidó, as well as supporting international sanctions against the country. She can still participate in the opposition primaries because they are not regulated by Maduro's government. Capriles has the same sentence and cannot hold office until 2032. Analysts determined that the accusation of having participated in the interim was incoherent, taking into account that María Corina was not a member of the 2015 opposition National Assembly (being prevented by a disqualification from the Comptroller's Office), in addition to never having been appointed in any position in Guaidó's interim government. The disqualification has been considered illegal and unconstitutional by several jurists, including constitutional lawyer . The Latin American and Caribbean Network for Democracy cited the precedent of the Petro Urrego v. Colombia sentence of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2020, which determined that "it is a serious violation of political human rights if an administrative authority, and not a judge through due judicial process, politically disqualifies a citizen".

July

On 10 July 2023, reported militants of the Communist Party of Venezuela filed a writ of amparo to the Supreme Tribunal of Justice to appoint an ad hoc board considering to the party, saying that it is "kidnapped" by its general secretary Óscar Figuera. The action followed the patten of the Democratic Action, Copei and Tupamaro parties, where new presidencies were imposed judicially, co-opting the name and symbols of the parties. Communist movements in Latin America expressed their support for the party, as well as the Communist Workers' Platform USA and the American Council of Bolsheviks, who said in a joint statement "the nowiki/>United Socialist Party of Venezuela">United_Socialist_Party_of_Venezuela.html" ;"title="nowiki/>United Socialist Party of Venezuela">nowiki/>United Socialist Party of Venezuela(PSUV), as a servant of the bourgeoisie, can never fulfill their false promise of socialism".

The same day, Venezuelan fact checking outlet ''Cazadores de Fake News'' denounced a discredit operation against María Corina Machado. The operation was promoted by a disinformation network that originally spread disinformation Leopoldo López, Juan Guaidó and other opposition politicians, and now focused in attacking María Corina.

On 12 July, eight out of the thirteen opposition candidates held a debate in the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello. It was the first presidential debate in Venezuela in 11 years, since 2012. The participants were María Corina Machado for Come Venezuela">Vente Venezuela