Venezuelan legislative: Grassroots opinion about opposition's campaign

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In Venezuela, elections will take place in the middle of next year. Therefore, in order to investigate how the opposition supporters think the campaign should be guided, we did from 15 to 20 October a series of focus group sessions consisting of grassroots typical representatives, from popular-class, with an age range between 21 and 45. Following is a summary of these sessions.

The focus group participants:

1) Have preference for the primaries as a method for choosing candidates to represent them in legislative elections of 2010. They believe that this system is more democratic, participatory and inclusive.

• "The primaries are the most democratic method for unity”.

• "Enough of the clique and arbitrary selections. I want primaries”.

2) Although they prefer primaries over other methods for choosing the candidates, they believe that unity is a higher goal. That is to say, going to the elections together is more important than whether the opposition candidate is elected by primaries or consensus. In fact, they know that the primaries are not a guarantee of unity.

• "Unity by consensus, primaries or polls ... but unity."

• "Remember that Emilio Grateron won in Chacao in primaries, but Liliana and Muchacho, among others, continued in the ring".

3) They think that the opposition campaign must go beyond a unity candidate. They also want the opposition to propose a legislative agenda that focuses on solving the problems of Venezuelans.

• "In the slums, people do not care if the candidate was elected in primaries or consensus, what they concern is unemployment and crime”.

• "Unity, consensus, primaries, and the draft laws? Where is the legislative agenda?”.

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