Venezuelan opposition split as Rosales vows to run in elections for A New Time in Zulia

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Venezuelan opposition split as Rosales vows to run in elections for A New Time in Zulia

November 4th, 2017

Awake Goy

nsnbc : Manuel Rosales, a former Zulia governor announced that he will run in the upcoming elections on behalf of the “A New Time” party in Venezuela’s Zulia State while other parties decided to boycott the elections.

Nuevo Tiempo leader Manuel Rosales. Photo courtesy of VTV. (archives)

A New Time, one of Venezuela’s major opposition parties organized in the opposition Roundtable of Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition, announced that it decided to run in local elections in December 2017 despite a boycott by the other coalition parties.

Three of the four main groupings in the MUD coalition have vowed not to participate in the December 10 balloting for 335 mayors and one governor because they say the election system is rigged.

However, A New Time, a party based in Venezuela’s oil-rich western Zulia state where the governorship will be contested in the elections, argues Maduro must still be fought at the ballot box to avoid simply handing him more political space.

Manuel Rosales, a former Zulia governor who fled to Peru in 2009 after corruption charges leveled by the administration of Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez, said on Thursday he would be running again on behalf of A New Time. ‘I’m not going to leave Zulianos alone,’ Rosales told supporters. Rosales was jailed in 2015 on his return from exile. However, authorities lifted a ban on him running for office just this week.

Rosales’ and A new Time’s stance with regard to the elections has caused heated debates within the MUD coalition. Another opposition leader won the Zulia governorship in elections last month but was prohibited from taking office for refusing to recognize the legality and legitimacy of the new Socialist Party (PSUV) controlled “super parliament” that was introduced this year after what many, even many PSUV members and supporters, described as a constitutional coup.

A/N – nsnbc 04.11.2017

Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/11/04/venezuelan-opposition-split-as-rosales-vows-to-run-in-elections-for-a-new-time-in-zulia/