Venezuela postpones presidential election to May 20

CARACAS, (Reuters) - Venezuela yesterday postponed its upcoming presidential vote to May 20 in a move cementing an opposition split as socialist incumbent Nicolas Maduro seeks re-election despite an economic crisis and global censure.

The national election board said it had pushed the vote back from the original date of April 22 following a pact between Maduro’s government and some opposition parties.

The main opposition coalition is boycotting the poll, saying it is a farce intended to legitimize a “dictatorship.”

Maduro’s two strongest opposition rivals, Leopoldo Lopez and Henrique Capriles, are both barred from standing, and most Venezuelans view the election board as answerable to Maduro.

Western nations and a dozen Latin American neighbors have reprimanded Maduro’s government over unfair conditions for the vote, and the United States is considering imposing sanctions on the OPEC member’s crucial oil sector.

Breaking with the main opposition coalition, however, one prominent opposition leader, Henri Falcon, has launched his candidacy.

The 56-year-old former state governor believes he can win, even without the coalition’s election machinery behind him, by taking advantage of widespread dissatisfaction with the ruling socialists over a fifth year of grueling recession.

However, opposition supporters in the camps of Lopez and Capriles have called Falcon a “sellout” and are urging voters to stay away from the polls to isolate Maduro and delegitimize what they say will be a rigged win.

“Sadly, Falcon succumbed to the temptation of participating and playing the dictatorship’s game,” said Juan Pablo Guanipa, a leader in Capriles’ Justice First party.

Government stalwart Jorge Rodriguez said Thursday’s agreement with Falcon’s Progressive Advance party, and some other movements, was evidence of a reconciliatory spirit that undercut foreign criticism of autocratic rule in Venezuela.

“Venezuela is a model democracy for the whole world,” Rodriguez, who is communications minister, told reporters at the election board headquarters.

Luis Romero, who leads Falcon’s party, said the only way to bring about change was via the polls, and not through protests similar to those that caused nearly 130 deaths last year.

“Venezuelans want to get rid of Maduro, but not by killing each other in the streets,” he said, also speaking at the election board in downtown Caracas.

As well as a change in the date, Falcon is demanding reforms of the pro-government election board, U.N. observers, and the end of state handouts close to voting booths on election days. He told Reuters he may pull out if guarantees are not given.

A former military man who broke with the ruling socialists in 2010, Falcon styles himself a center-leftist favoring business-friendly policies with strong social welfare programs.

Maduro is campaigning on a pledge to stay loyal to predecessor Hugo Chavez’s self-styled “21st century socialism.”