CARACAS (Reuters) -The president of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council Pedro Calzadilla on Thursday announced he would resign along with seven other members, ahead of a 2024 presidential election.
The country’s opposition has long alleged that the council is biased toward President Nicolas Maduro’s ruling party. A majority of the council’s 15 members, including Calzadilla and the seven others who resigned, are allied with the government, while just two are allied with the opposition.
“We have put our posts at the disposition of the national assembly so they can at once designate a national electoral council”, Calzadilla said in a statement to journalists at the council’s headquarters, without taking questions.
The move comes two weeks after the opposition commission tasked with organizing October primaries to choose a rival for Maduro in the presidential vote said it would request technical assistance from the National Electoral Council.
“We hope this will not be a scheme to try and generate an impact on the primary and in consequence on the general election,” said Dinorah Figuera, the head of the parallel opposition legislature, in a message to Reuters. She said the opposition was demanding the process be protected.
A European Union observation mission said after the country’s 2021 regional elections that electoral conditions had improved in comparison to the three previous elections.
But the report said structural deficiencies persisted in state resources for campaigning and unequal access to the media, which favors the ruling party.
(Reporting by Deisy Buitrago, Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas; Writing by Steven Grattan; Editing by Conor Humphries)
