Liberal politician Maria Corina Machado celebrates with supporters as she leads in the first round of Venezuela's opposition primary designed to select a rival to President Nicolas Maduro in 2024 elections. Machado however is currently disqualified and in theory cannot be a candidate in that election. A first bulletin from the commission that organised the internal elections gave Machado 552,430 out of 601,110 votes so far counted with 26% of the ballots counted. Her closest rival, Carlos Prosperi, who had denounced irregularities in the process, obtained 28,153 votes, with the rest polling less than 5,000. IMAGES