The Voluntad Popular (VP) party, led by Leopoldo López and in which Juan Guaidó has spent a good part of his career, criticized this Tuesday that one of its leaders, Daniel Ceballos, has “lent to the interests” of the government by joining the board of the formation appointed by the Supreme Court, to the detriment of the traditional group, intervened by the high court.
At a press conference, the leader Freddy Superlano lamented that Ceballos, who was deprived of liberty in 2014 due to the protests at the time and sentenced to 12 months in prison for contempt of a precautionary measure of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), has been « lent to the interests of the de facto power, of those who protect, from Miraflores, the power».
“You may have differences, (…) that the Voluntad Popular policy is not the most successful, (…) what is not forgiven is that, following you admonished this model that, by de facto power, governs in Venezuela, you go out and say that you believe that you can live in a dictatorship, that you can work with Nicolás,” said Superlano.
On March 30, Ceballos, former mayor of San Cristóbal, Táchira state, announced that he is joining the Voluntad Popular faction that, by order of the TSJ in 2020, controls the party’s electoral card and, therefore, is authorized to attend some elections.
In July 2020, the TSJ suspended the VP board and handed over its electoral symbols to José Gregorio Noriega Figueroa, a dissident from the expelled party and whom his former colleagues accuse of being bribed by the government.
Daniel Ceballos: “The president is Nicolás Maduro”
On Friday, the leader stated in broadcast interview by Globovisión that “the president is Nicolás Maduro”, despite the fact that the VP faction led by López recognizes Guaidó as interim president of the country since he was proclaimed as such in January 2019.
In that sense, Superlano insisted that “it is a humiliation to the dignity of everyone who today stands up for the fight.”
He pointed out that the government “needed a person who responded to its interests, who had been a victim and who might use him now” for a “normalization process” of the country that, he said, the Executive has undertaken in recent months through the discussion of new TSJ magistrates and of economic bubbles “that do not exist in deep Venezuela.”
He explained that the country is torn between two political theses: “one of those that try to normalize the institutions (…) that tries to make the country see that it is entering a process of normality, when it really is not; and another that refuses to fall into temptation; another that, beyond the persecution, continues to say present».
«Popular Will is with that thesis, with which it is not normalized, with which it does not wash the face of the regime, in which it does not lend itself to crooks, in which it does not bend its knees before the dictatorship. It is the Popular Will that we defend », he expressed.
However, at least 140 VP militants renounced their militancy between February and March, according to former member of the formation David Sosa.
Popular Will sets its position once morest the betrayal of Daniel Ceballos and the new strategy of false normalization of the Nicolás Maduro regime
https://t.co/aDS5MGLU7j– Popular Will (@PopularWill) April 5, 2022
