Venezuela under tension awaits the result of the presidential election

(Caracas) Venezuela held its breath Sunday evening awaiting the result of Sunday’s presidential election between the incumbent Nicolas Maduro, 61, who is seeking a third six-year term, and the discreet diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, 74, while most of the polling stations had closed their doors.

Shortly before 8 p.m. local time, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was declared ineligible and therefore unable to run, called on her compatriots “to stay in the polling stations” in a public statement from her campaign headquarters in Caracas.

“We want to ask all Venezuelans to stay in their polling stations, to be there to monitor. We have fought all these years for this day, these are the crucial minutes,” she said, smiling alongside candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.

Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia, 74, who had replaced Mr.^me Machado did not give figures – only the National Electoral Council (CNE) has the right to announce the results – but indicated that he was “more than satisfied” with the day, assuring that they would “celebrate in peace.”

Without wanting to give any figures, Mr.^me Machado said the campaign headquarters received the ballots from the opposition poll workers at the 30,000 polling stations, stressing: “We are not speculating, we are speaking with evidence in hand.”

The results are expected tonight.

Experts believe that turnout is one of the keys to the election, with the opposition needing a strong turnout to win.

“In all the polling stations in the country, we see a huge turnout. I am very proud of it. We are realizing a dream […] “We are going to be free,” Mr.^me Machado in the afternoon.

The CNE did not give any figures, but according to M^me Machado said turnout as of 1 p.m. ET was “42.1 percent, which is 9.3 million people.” “That’s huge and if it holds up, that number will be historic.”

Wearing a tracksuit in the colours of Venezuela, President Maduro, heir to Hugo Chavez, the former socialist-inspired president from 1999 until his death in 2013, voted as soon as the polls opened at 6 a.m. “I recognise and will recognise the electoral arbiter, the official statements and I will enforce them,” he promised, while the opposition fears fraud or manipulation.

“Continue to move forward in harmony”

The outgoing president described a “battle […] between those […] who want violence and those of us who love Venezuela, who have weathered all the storms and want to continue moving forward in harmony.”

Much applauded at the polling station where he went at the end of the morning, Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia assured him: “We are ready to defend until the last vote.”

Griselda Barroso, a 54-year-old lawyer, went to her polling station at 4:30 a.m. “I hope Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia triumphs. I hope there will be democracy” in Venezuela, she said.

In the 23 January neighborhood, a bastion of power, Maria de Rivero, 83, calls herself a “Madurista” and proud of the outgoing president’s record.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that “the Venezuelan people deserve an election that truly reflects their will, free from manipulation.”

” I’m with him […] Everything will improve. I am happy because there has been a lot of education, which was not the case before. The poor, the children could not enter university.”

In the oil state of Zulia (west), a student assures that the government buys votes. “When I went to vote, a woman stood next to the machine […]. She signaled to another person to tell them that I had voted for Edmundo,” she explains.

“After that they put a yellow sticker on my ID card. They put a black sticker on the cards of people who voted for Maduro. This black sticker gives you a Clap bag (food aid, editor’s note) when you leave the polling station,” she says.

Caracas has limited observation of the vote. Venezuela, which had already withdrawn its invitation to the European Union to observe the vote in May, has blocked or refused at the last minute many international observers, including four former Latin American presidents whose plane was held up in Panama on Friday.

There are ten candidates in the running, but the election is coming down to a duel between Messrs. Maduro and Gonzalez Urrutia.

Army attitude

The polls show the opposition in the lead (maximum 30% for Mr. Maduro; opposition between 50 and 70%). The government, for its part, is confident of its victory.

Mr Maduro, who relies on the military and police harassment of the opposition, has repeatedly promised that he will not give up power. During the campaign, he spoke of a possible “bloodbath in a fratricidal civil war provoked by the fascists”.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that “the Venezuelan people deserve an election that truly reflects their will, free from manipulation.”

The oil country, long one of the richest in Latin America, is bled dry, mired in an unprecedented economic and social crisis: collapse of oil production, GDP reduced by 80% in ten years, hyperinflation, poverty and totally dilapidated health and education systems.

The government accuses the “criminal blockade” of being the root of all evils. The United States had tightened its sanctions in an attempt to oust Mr. Maduro after his contested re-election in 2018, in a vote marred by fraud according to the opposition, which led to demonstrations that were severely repressed.

One of the keys will be the attitude of the security apparatus. “The Bolivarian National Armed Forces support me,” Maduro said. Gonzalez Urrutia said he was “convinced that the armed forces will ensure that the decision of our people is respected.”