Friday, December 4, 2015 Venezuela on edge as campaigning closes

Friday, December 4, 2015

Venezuela on edge as campaigning closes

Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro greets supporters accompanied by his wife Cilia Flores during the last campaign rally with pro-government candidates for Sunday’s legislative elections, in Caracas, yesterday.

Maduro says Sunday’s elections ‘will be a battle’ with ‘much to defend,’ as opposition warns of foul play

CARACAS — Several thousand government supporters and public employees, dressed in their characteristic red shirts beneath banners emblazoned with the face of late president Hugo Chávez, gathered on the Caracas’s largest avenue yesterday to join in the Venezuelan government’s closing campaign.

The electioneering came to an end yesterday amid a tense atmosphere and great expectations for the changes that Sunday’s legislative elections might trigger in a country burdened by a deep economic crisis.

President Nicolás Maduro, accompanied by the first lady, Cilia Flores, attended yesterday’s rally flanked by several candidates from the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP), the coalition headed by the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV), running for a seat in the National Assembly (AN).

The opposition closed their campaign with a rally in the eastern side of the capital, but concentrated their efforts on online canvassing.

The three-week campaign was marred by the assassination of an opposition leader in the state of Guaríco, among other violent incidents.

On the closing day, Maduro called for government supporters to prepare for the “battle” on December 6 to guarantee the continuity of the socialist process.

“December 6 will be a day of battle and fighting, of definitions and of national history. There is much to defend,” the president said in another rally in the coastal state of Aragua.

He added that his supporter’s task is to “free the country from the trappings of the parasitic bourgeoisie.”

In the city of Maturín, the AN’s president and candidate for a new term as legislator, Diosdado Cabello, called Sunday’s vote “the mother of all battles” and he said the government candidates will not “lie in bed with the bourgeoisie” but “deepen the Bolivarian Revolution towards socialism.”

Cabello said that “the only recourse” that the opposition has “is to cry fraud.”

“The only chance the right (-wing) have is to cry out fraud, so that its international allies attack the homeland and before those attacks the unity of the revolutionary force must stand,” Maduro’s number two said in the closing rally of his campaign in the state Monagas.

“If we win by one vote, we will make the right recognize the results,” he declared during the rally, broadcast on state television channel VTV.

Opposition’s hope

For the first time in 17 years however, the ruling party appears behind in polls against the opposition who, according to the country’s main pollsters, are favourites to win a majority in the single-chamber Assembly.

Political Consultant Edgar Gutiérrez said the gains the opposition has made are mostly down to the dissatisfaction over Maduro’s government and concern due to the economic crisis.

“The punishment vote (against the government) is much greater than the vote for the opposition,” he added.

The opposition coalition, which brings together 28 parties, aims to win the majority of the 167 seats in the AN, which is currently controlled by the PSUV.

The executive secretary of the opposition’s MUD coalition, Jesús Torrealba, claimed in a video uploaded to the alliance’s Youtube channel that “the government is resorting to desperate measures” and is forcing TV channels “to adhere in an illegal and opportunistic cadena (mandatory state broadcast) tonight from 7 to 9pm featuring the PSUV candidates.”

He called for visiting international organizations, on both official and unofficial electoral observation missons, “to record this brutal act of opportunism.”

“We express our clear solidarity with the workers, journalists, managers and owners of the media who are being subjected to this compulsory measure, which forces them to become unwitting accomplices to an electoral offence,” the opposition leader claimed.

“This is the time when the voice of the people, through online media, can balance the abuse of power in the mainstream media,” Torrealba said.

Media difficulties

Secretary General of the National Union of Press Workers (SNTP), Marco Ruiz said at a press conference yesterday that the government has forced foreign journalists coming to cover the Sunday elections, to sign “a letter of promise that constitutes prior censorship.”

Ruiz also reported that the equipment of three media channels — Argentine television channel Telefé, the US's CNN in Spanish and Mexican channel Televisa — was detained for several hours upon arrival to Caracas’s airport.

Some analysts say that if the trend shown in the polls, which gives the opposition a lead of more than 20 percent, becomes a reality on Sunday then the opposition could win close to 101 seats and achieve a qualified majority that would be essential to pass laws, approving votes of no confidence against the ministers and the vice-president, and remove electoral authorities.

The opposition has announced that if they win control of the AN, they may implement a series of political changes that could lead to the holding of a recall referendum for Maduro, whose popularity has been hit by a severe economic crisis characterized by runaway inflation and shortages of food and other basic goods.

— Herald with agencies, online sources