BRASÍLIA: French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Thursday hit out at Venezuela over the exclusion of a key opposition candidate from July elections.

Venezuela’s opposition Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) was this week forced to register an unknown candidate after being unable to sign up Corina Yoris to face off against President Nicolas Maduro, who is seeking a third term in office.

“We very firmly condemn the exclusion of a serious and credible candidate from this process,” Macron said at a press conference in Brasilia, at the end of a three-day official visit to Brazil. Lula described the situation as “serious” and said there was “no legal or political explanation for banning an opponent from being a candidate.”

“I told Maduro that the most important thing to restore normality in Venezuela was to avoid any problems in the electoral process, that the elections take place in the most democratic way possible.”

Yoris was already the opposition’s Plan B.

PUD leader Maria Corina Machado overwhelmingly won an opposition primary in October last year, but was banned from public office for 15 years by courts loyal to Maduro accused of corruption — a charge she dismisses as fabricated — and of supporting sanctions against his government.

So, she tapped Yoris, an 80-year-old university professor, as her stand-in.

However, by the time the deadline struck on Monday, the PUD was unable to access the website to register Yoris.

Instead, the coalition managed to slip in the name of a little-known former ambassador, Edmundo Gonzalez Urruti, as a “provisional” candidate who Machado now hopes she will be able to replace.