Venezuela Announces Local, Regional Elections Will Be in 2017

Venezuelan authorities have postponed regional and local elections expected to take place at the end of this year until 2017 in a move that will likely flare tensions with the opposition pushing for a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro.

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National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced Tuesday in Caracas that regional elections for governors will take place at the end of the first quarter of 2017, while municipal voting will take place in the second quarter.

Lucena added that the electoral body is waiting for a response from the Supreme Court to continue scheduling the elections.

“As soon as this inquiry is answered, the National Electoral Board will restart this activity as soon as possible,” she said.

The 23 governors whose seats will be up for grabs on the next ballot were elected at the end of 2012 for a four-year term. The overwhelming majority — 20 out of 23 lawmakers — are members of Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela or PSUV, and the remaining three are members of the opposition coalition, the Democratic Unity Roundtable, known as the MUD.

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President Nicolas Maduro supported the announcement in his weekly televised address Tuesday night.

“The National Electoral Council, in fulfillment of its institutional functions … presented a tentative schedule for a country like ours — democratic,” he said. “Next year the governor and mayoral elections will be held and surely in December 2018 the presidential elections will be held.”

The decision comes after Maduro has insisted in recent weeks that the priority in the country is to remedy the economy after it has suffered a blow from plummeting oil prices in the past year.

“The priority is the economy, recovering production,” Maduro said in his televised address on Oct. 4, criticizing the right-wing opposition. “I ask, what is the priority of the country, to fulfill the whims of the oligarchy or to recover the economy?”

The MUD criticized the decision to postpone the elections in a statement, heralding the move as “dangerous.”

The opposition has been gunning for a recall referendum to ask voters whether they want to remove Maduro from office. The question of the referendum has been at the center of heated political debate for months and has been a lightening rod of international criticism attacking Venezuela. Electoral authorities have set a timeline for a possible referendum to happen next year, which would mean that if Venezuelans vote to end Maduro’s mandate, his vice president would take over for the rest of the term instead of forcing snap elections.

In his address Tuesday, Maduro called on the opposition to put forward concrete political proposals in the electoral process.

“I recommend that the political parties of the opposition get a move on,” he said. “If they want to have governor (and) mayoral candidates … get serious, there is the registration period, follow the law. Because if not, they will get left out.”