Venezuela calls early election, with Maduro ready

VENEZUELA will hold a presidential election by the end of April, the ruling Constituent Assembly said on Tuesday, pulling forward a vote in which President Nicolás Maduro hopes to triumph over a divided opposition and win a second term.

The 55-year-old Maduro, a towering mustachioed former bus driver who was Hugo Chávez’s handpicked successor, said he is ready to run if he receives the party’s nomination.

“I am a humble worker, a humble man of the people,” he told reporters at a rally in Caracas. “If the United Socialist Party of Venezuela . . . believes that I should be the presidential candidate . . . I’m at your service.”

It is the closest that Maduro has come to declaring his candidacy. He has yet to formally be nominated by his party, but it seems a foregone conclusion.

Top party official Diosdado Cabello confirmed to the Assembly that Maduro would be the party’s sole candidate.

“We are not going to have a problem. We have only one candidate to continue with the revolution,” he said, as delegates chanted “Nicolás, Nicolás”.

Vice President Tareck El Aissami told a party rally late last year that Maduro would seek a second term.

The polls had been scheduled to be held by the end of the year, but analysts had predicted Maduro would seek an early election to seize the advantage over his opponents as they reel from a string of recent defeats.

“It’s completely logical for the government to advance the election, first because it faces a very complicated year economically, and second it’s trying to catch the opposition at a time of disrup- tion,” said analyst Benigno Alarcon.

Maduro’s unpopularity rating has risen to 70 percent as his oil-rich country slipped inexorably into a severe economic crisis compounded by corruption and the fall in the price of crude.

A divided opposition, drawn into a coalition called the Democratic Union Roundtable, however has been unable to capitalise. Instead, it has slipped to a series of defeats in regional and municipal elections it has blamed on massive government fraud, but which have seen the Socialists consolidate their hold on power.