CARACAS – Venezuela will allow a coalition of major opposition political parties to field candidates in upcoming elections, the head of the electoral council said on Tuesday, as the opposition and government prepare to enter into a negotiation process.
The South American country’s supreme court in 2018 ruled that the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), which groups large opposition parties, could not participate in elections, arguing candidates could not be members of both the MUD and the individual political parties that form it.
Tuesday’s move comes after the socialist-held National Assembly in May named opposition-linked figures to a new elections council for the first time in years, and after Maduro said he would be willing to negotiate with Guaido in an effort to ease tensions and convince Washington to lift sanctions.
“This step is an opportunity to regroup and rebuild the alternative for political change,” opposition politician Stalin Gonzalez, who participated in a prior round of negotiations in 2019, wrote on Twitter.