Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favoured to win Venezuela vote

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Despite crisis and outcry, Maduro favoured to win Venezuela vote

By Vivian Sequera and Corina Pons

 

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro casts his vote at a polling station, during the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

 

CARACAS/BARQUISIMETO, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's leftist leader, Nicolas Maduro, looked set to win re-election on Sunday in what looked to be a poorly attended vote condemned by foes as the "coronation" of a dictator and likely to bring new foreign sanctions.

 

Despite his unpopularity over the OPEC member's economic meltdown, the 55-year-old former bus driver was benefiting from a boycott by the mainstream opposition, a ban on his two most popular rivals, and state institutions in loyalists' hands.

 

The vote could trigger additional sanctions from the United States and more censure from the European Union and Latin America. The Trump administration said it would not recognise the "sham" election and was considering oil sanctions.

 

Maduro, the self-described "son" of former President Hugo Chavez, says he is battling an "imperialist" plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela's oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.

 

Maduro's main challenger is a former state governor, Henri Falcon, who predicted an upset because of fury among Venezuela's 30 million people at their increased poverty.

 

Although some opinion polls have shown Falcon ahead, analysts say his chances are thin, given widespread abstention, the vote-winning power of state handouts and Maduro's allies on the election board.

 

In polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia, attendance appeared far lower than at the last presidential election in 2013 when there was an 80 percent turnout.

 

An opposition umbrella movement called the Broad Front, which was boycotting the vote, said on Sunday evening that turnout had been under 30 percent, according to its monitors across the nation, in what it termed an "electoral farce."

 

There were lines, however, outside some polling stations in poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro.

 

"I'm hungry and don't have a job, but I'm sticking to Maduro," said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices.

 

The government has set up so-called red point zones near polling stations so Venezuelans can scan their state-issued "fatherland cards" used to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers. Maduro has promised a "prize" to those who do so. Critics say that is a way of scaring impoverished Venezuelans into supporting his government.

 

Falcon's team said it received about 900 complaints about the "red points." Several state workers also told Reuters they were pressured to vote, while pro-government activists hovered around some polling stations, saying they were assisting voters.

 

Further hurting Falcon's chances by splitting the anti-Maduro vote was a third candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, who has picked up a large following, partly because of free soup handouts.

 

FIVE-YEAR RECESSION

Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: They criticise Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits.

 

Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration.

 

"I think this constant aggression from the government of the Ku Klux Klan is losing credibility," Maduro said on Sunday, blaming U.S. President Donald Trump for Venezuela's mess.

 

Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials - Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami - were hung from a footbridge.

 

But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment.

 

"I'm not voting - what's the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time," said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days.

 

In what the opposition said was a bid to legitimize Maduro's coming victory, state television urged Venezuelans to vote and Maduro said that transport to polling centres would be "facilitated."

 

Some opposition supporters say the boycott only made life easier for Maduro and that his rivals should have fought him at the ballot box despite an unfair playing ground.

 

"I'm voting because the opposition doesn't have any proposals for what we're going to do when Maduro wins today. I want this nightmare to stop," said teacher Luisa Marquez, 56, in Valencia.

 

Should Maduro win, he may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling "Chavismo" movement.

 

Abroad, Maduro is likely to face further Western and Latin American protests should he win, although Russia and China remain allies and have been important financial backers.

 

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera said on Sunday the elections did not fulfill the "minimum standards of a true democracy" and that Chile did not recognise them as legitimate.

 

Maduro faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly.

 

Venezuela election: https://tmsnrt.rs/2IWH6ZD

 

(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla)

 

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera in Caracas and Corina Pons in Barquisimeto, Venezuela; Additional reporting by Anggy Polanco and Brian Ellsworth in San Cristobal; Luc Cohen, Leon Wietfeld, Pablo Garibian, Andreina Aponte and Andrew Cawthorne in Caracas; Mircely Guanipa in Punto Fijo; Tibisay Romero in Valencia; Francisco Aguilar in Barinas; Maria Ramirez in Ciudad Guayana; Isaac Urrutia in Maracaibo and Caroline Stauffer and Hugh Bronstein in Buenos Aires; Writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Peter Cooney)

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2018-05-21

[Get Real]

It´s hard to loose when there is no real competition, right. I guess somebody have to learn a lot from this guy before it´s time for election.

[DoctorG]

Apparently Maruro won with about 75% of the vote. No surprise there.

[Baerboxer]

5 hours ago, DoctorG said:

Apparently Maruro won with about 75% of the vote. No surprise there.

 

but only around 35% of the electorate due to the boycott and those who didn't vote because of it.

 

But if all had voted and he lost, he'd simply hold another election and declare himself the winner. Just like when parliament voted against him he just formed his own new assembly.

 

Wonder if anyone will probe his and his family's unusual wealth? Another great socialist reminiscent of Napoleon the pig from Animal farm.

[AsiaHand]

With only Maduro people counting the votes,of course he is going to win.He and all of his government will be facing santions from most of Europe and The US,including travel and banking bans.

[bendejo]

This is where Thailand's rule about if election turn out is too low then the election is void comes into play.  Good idea, that.

 

I also like Brazil's rule that voting is mandatory:  I'm not sure what the consequences of not voting are, but I know the people down there take it seriously.

 

Sad thing is Chavez did not groom a successor, this Maduro is an empty suit (or uniform), doesn't really know what the hell he's doing.  Same with Assad in Syria -- his brother was supposed to president.