Venezuela to hold landmark regional vote

CaraCas: Venezuelans will vote in regional elections seen as a key test for both President Nicolas Maduro and the opposition alike after months of street protests that failed to unseat him.

The opposition, unable to sustain the protests in which 125 people were killed between April and July, is seeking a big turnout which experts say could give them victory in the vast majority of Venezuela’s 23 states in the vote to elect governors.

International powers accuse Maduro of dismantling democracy by taking over state institutions in the wake of an economic collapse caused by a fall in the price of oil, its sole significant source of revenue.

Tomorrow’s polls are the first contested by the opposition since legislative elections in 2015 which gave it a majority in parliament.

Ex-presidential candidate and key opposition figure Henrique Capriles is among those calling for a massive turnout.

“Get out and vote, win and free the country from the dictatorship of Maduro,” said Capriles, the outgoing governor of Miranda province.

The opposition Democratic Union Roundtable coalition (MUD) finds itself having to lift its own discouraged support base. They have seen Maduro’s hand strengthened after he faced down the protests, forming a Constituent Assembly packed with his own allies and wresting legislative power away from the opposition- dominated national assembly.

For Maduro, the polls are an opportunity to give the lie, to some degree, to allegations of dictatorship at home and abroad levelled at him after forming the Constituent Assembly.

Maduro signalled this week that tomorrow’s vote would effectively be a vote in support of the assembly, forcing even its staunchest critics in the opposition to recognise it.

He said governors-elect chosen in tomorrow’s vote would have to be “sworn-in and subordinate themselves” to the Assembly, on pain of dismissal.

Even if his allies suffer at the polls, the elections could provide a boost for Maduro, said David Smilde of the Washington Office on Latin America.

“If they hold a semi-legitimate election that leads to opposition figures taking their position in governorships, it will inevitably reduce the resonance of the term ‘dictatorship’ when applied to Venezuela,” he said.

“The real test will come after the election as the government will either face a very different map with at least half of the governorships in the hands of the opposition, or will have to carry out some inelegant political manoeuvres that will likely carry significant political costs,” said Smilde. — AFP