Weekly Report - 06 August 2015 (WR-15-31)

Registration for legislative elections on 6 December got underway this week. While the government frontloaded its list of candidates with the First Lady Celia Flores, some cabinet heavyweights, singers and sportsmen, the national electoral council (CNE) rejected the application of María Corina Machado to run for the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD). Machado won more votes than any other candidate in the 2010 legislative elections and her exclusion is a major blow for the MUD. In a sign of the tension that is likely to build as the electoral campaign unfolds, a youth was shot dead in the midst of the looting of a supermarket in the city of Ciudad Guayana in the south-eastern state of Bolívar on 31 July.