As despair engulfs Venezuela, many voters plan to skip election

Mariana Leal won’t vote in Sunday’s presidential election because she believes the fix is in for President Nicolas Maduro to win reelection. Besides, the physical therapist from Caracas has something better to do: pack for her imminent departure from Venezuela.

“These elections don’t mean anything,” said Leal, 29, as she prepared to sell her last possessions in her east Caracas apartment before leaving for Colombia. “There won’t be any real change. To the contrary, the deterioration of the country will accelerate.”

Leal’s intention to skip voting and determination to leave her native country are typical of the sentiments of many Venezuelans before Sunday’s election in which Maduro is expected to win his race against former Lara state Gov. Henri Falcon and evangelist preacher Javier Bertucci.

Disgust with Maduro among Venezuelans is high because of the lack of food and medical care, annual inflation of 14,000 percent and a poverty rate that now encompasses 80 percent of the population. Reports of widespread hunger and unemployment are common.

Originally scheduled for the end of this year, the election was moved up on orders of the Constitutional Assembly, a legislative body set up by Maduro after the democratically elected National Assembly effectively was neutered by several rulings by Supreme Court judges loyal to the president that international observers criticized as antidemocratic. According to a recent opinion poll by the Meganalisis firm, Maduro had an approval rating is only 15.3 percent among those questioned. “They want to stigmatize me as a dictator, but I couldn’t care less,” Maduro said in a televised address last week.

Leal, who is married with an infant son, is one of the thousands of disaffected Venezuelans in the process of “burning their boats” — selling all their possessions and cutting all ties to start new lives in other countries. Having sold all her remaining belongings except her bed, her baby’s crib and a refrigerator, she plans to join her husband in Colombia this summer.

According to the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 900,000 Venezuelans migrated to other countries from 2015 to 2017 to escape the collapsed economy and repressive government. The flow of migrants through Colombia over the first three months of the year tripled over the comparable period last year, border authorities said.

Abstentions are likely to be high among the 20 million eligible voters, given the low confidence in the Maduro-stacked National Electoral Council and the lack of international monitors at the polls, according to a survey by Andres Bello Catholic University.

The Democratic Union bloc of opposition parties has urged its followers to boycott the election, considering it fraudulent. The U.S., the European Union and neighboring countries, including Colombia, have said they will not recognize the election result.

Maduro was named by President Hugo Chavez as his successor shortly before Chavez died in March 2013. The next month, the former bus driver and union organizer narrowly won election over opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, who claimed there were dozens of balloting irregularities that were not investigated by the National Electoral Council.

Since then, declining oil prices, sanctions against top government officials for alleged complicity in drug trafficking and missed payments on foreign debt obligations have caused the once-prosperous economy to implode. Total economic activity has shrunk for three straight years.

Last week, the Kellogg’s cereal company added its name to the long list of multinational companies closing operations because of the unstable currency and diminished purchasing power of Venezuelans. Previous departures include Toyota, Kimberly Clark and Clorox.