Legitimacy of Venezuelan election comes under siege
BOGOTÁ, Colombia — The legitimacy of Sunday’s election to overhaul Venezuela’s constitution was under threat as many voters avoided the ballot box, nations across the region rejected the predetermined result and the nation’s streets saw their deadliest day of civil unrest in three months.
President Nicolás Maduro had ordered a rewriting of Venezuela’s constitution. The election Sunday was simply to pick the members of the constituent assembly that will carry it out; there was no option to reject the process.
Nearly all candidates were politicians close to Maduro, presumably assuring that the outcome would leave his leftist movement with complete control of the country once the assembly takes charge.
“I said rain, thunder or lightning, the 30th of July was going to come,” the president said in a shaky video made from his vehicle after he cast his ballot. He remained sanguine throughout the day, saying the vote would soon bring peace to a country where more than 110 people have died in unrest during protests this year against his rule.
But the powers of the new assembly members will be so vast that they could possibly remove Maduro from office, some analysts noted, ending a presidency that has been deeply unpopular, even among many leftists.
As the day rolled on, many countries — some once aligned with Venezuela’s leftist ideology — rejected the result, including Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Peru.
Nikki R. Haley, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, called the vote a “sham election” that would lead to a dictatorship as the United States threatened sanctions against Venezuela’s economy.
“If these other countries don’t recognize Venezuela as a democracy, it will be hard for them to look like a legitimate power,” said David Smilde, a senior fellow specializing in Venezuela at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group. Smilde mentioned a list of consequences that such isolation could entail, from access to bank loans to straining diplomatic ties with its largest neighbors.
One candidate for the constituent assembly, José Félix Pineda, a 39-year-old lawyer, was killed in his home the night before the vote. Prosecutors said an armed group had broken into Pineda’s home in Ciudad Bolívar on Saturday night and shot him dead there.
Hours later, a large explosion rocked a middle-class neighborhood in the Venezuelan capital, Caracas, injuring seven police officers on patrol there. Video circulated on social media showed the uniformed officers, all on motorcycles, riding into a fireball that had just erupted in front of them.
Nearby residents applauded as the security forces threw tear gas at them.
As the day wore on, government security forces used water cannons, rubber bullets and batons against opposition protesters, just as they have for the last three months.
At least 10 people were killed in clashes between police and protesters, the government said, including two boys, ages 13 and 17, who were shot in the western state of Táchira. A police officer was shot in front of a school in Táchira, and a 43-year-old man was killed in the central city of Barquisimeto in Lara state when a bullet pierced his head, according to the state prosecutor’s office.
The force of the unrest raised fears that Maduro’s efforts to consolidate power could steer the country toward deeper conflict.
The government took strong precautions to control Sunday’s vote. It outlawed protests in the days before and after, vowing tough sentences for those who disobeyed. And it barred many news outlets, including The New York Times, from entering polling stations to interview voters.