(AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos). A man smokes a cigar at a parking lot decorated, top right, with a graffiti depicting the eyes of the late Hugo Chavez in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Dec. 5, 2015.
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According to the latest Venebarómetro poll published on November 29, 42.7 percent plan to vote for the opposition alliance, 27.6 percent for the ruling coalition and 11 percent for independents.
Voters in working class parts of the capital Caracas rose early on Sunday morning to the sound of government sponsored music and fireworks.
Quiroga, a conservative who is in Venezuela to support the opposition, said jailed politicians should be allowed to vote and criticized state media for skewed coverage. “You can’t believe the level of hate there is here now”. But it would shatter the Socialist Party’s aura of invincibility and may embolden foes to seek a recall of Maduro in 2016.
The BBC’s Daniel Pardo explains why this is happening ahead of Sunday’s crucial vote.
But the president changed his tone on Sunday.
Isolina Gonzalez, a 47-year-old retired professor, had a simpler goal: “My desire is that whoever has to win, wins, but in peace”, she said. “They say they’re winning in the polls – it’s the same story of the last 17 years”, he said, “Let them win in the polls, we will win in the streets”.
“At other times, we went to vote with doubts and pessimism, if I’m honest”.
Venezuela has one of the highest inflation rates in the world and has been suffering of chronic shortages of many basic goods in recent years. The economic crisis has worsened with this year’s slump in oil revenue, which funds nearly all public spending.
On Venezuela’s overwhelmingly pro-government television channels, supporters and officials of anti-US President Nicolas Maduro’s government appeared urging people to come out and vote.
“A key task for the new National Assembly will be to bring about economic recovery, to attack hoarders, speculators, and those who are hiding products”, he said. “Revolution and nothing else”, said mechanic Gilberto Marcano, 73, as he stood in line to vote in northern Caracas. “Those guys were in power for years before Chavez came, and they never gave us a single thing”, he said as he hawked empanadas to voters waiting in line.
David Smilde, a senior fellow specialising in Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America, said there was a 90 percent chance the opposition was going to gain a majority.
Yet Venezuela hasn’t held a fair, transparent election in more than a decade, and President Nicolás… Mr. Maduro’s near-complete grip on other branches of government like the Supreme Court mean he can easily outflank a hostile congress. And some have already floated the idea that outgoing lawmakers can pass a law granting Mr. Maduro special decree powers to ride roughshod over the new congress, which won’t be sworn in until January.
“For the will of the people to be respected, polling stations where there are no longer any voters present should be closed to prevent last-minute campaigning”, said a representative of the broad opposition coalition MUD, former CNE official Vicente Diaz.
The top authority of that ruling center, Tibisay Lucena, reported on the vote progress and asserted that with the opening of more than 40,000 voting tables at 6:00 hours, local time, 100 percent of the technological platform was activated, without reports on irregularities. Still, even a small victory would provide an important lift to the frequently outmaneuvered opposition. There’s no visible presence of the opposition Democratic Unity coalition.
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The National Electoral Council has yet to announce results and the opposition claim could not be confirmed.
