“I hope no candidate withdraws because the screws are tightened from Washington or because US Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls on threatening them,” declared the president, who said he expects them to remain loyal to their country and seek out their voters, because “there are voters for everyone.” He asserted that whoever wins “a governorship has won, and whoever is elected as a deputy is welcome.”

Parliamentary Speaker Jorge Rodríguez commented that despite the turnout data released the day before by the National Electoral Council (CNE), victory cannot yet be declared because “sometimes there is great barefacedness on the part of some of the opposition political figures in Venezuela.” He pointed out that when they participate, they only do so to claim fraud in case they lose the elections.

Rodríguez asserted that the forces of the Great Simón Bolívar Patriotic Pole (GPPSB) are preparing to achieve a great victory on May 25th, and noted that “I hope they have truly learned from the many mistakes they made in the past.”

The official stated that it is now perfectly clear that they have a position on the Venezuelan electoral system, because “no one is a masochist who submits to a specific electoral system if they don’t trust it or the results.” “They are endorsing, as did the more than six thousand candidates who put their names forward, that the (Venezuelan) electoral system is transparent and the most efficient in the entire world,” he emphasized.

The CNE highlighted recently the participation in the May regional elections in which 54 political organizations will participate, and 36,986 nominations were received, corresponding to 6,687 candidates. Thirty-six national political organizations, 10 regional organizations, three national and three regional indigenous groups, registered for a total of 54 candidates.

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