CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans will vote Sunday in a presidential election that could bring about major political change or extend for another six years the policies that have caused the world’s worst peacetime economic collapse.
clock: What to know about Venezuela’s crucial presidential election
Whether President Nicolás Maduro or his main rival, former diplomat Edmundo González, is elected, the election will have ripple effects across the Americas. If Maduro is re-elected, both opponents and supporters of the government have signaled they will join the 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already fled the country in search of opportunity abroad.
Polls opened at 6am but at some polling stations across the country voters lined up much earlier and shared water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
Alejandro Zurbaran lined up at 5pm on Saturday to secure the first seat at his polling station. He said he was standing outside his primary school in the hills outside the capital, Caracas, praying for “the future of the country.”
“We’re all here for the change we want to see,” Zurbaran, 74, who works in maintenance, said as other voters nodded in agreement.
The number of voters in this presidential election is estimated at about 17 million. Polls close at 6 pm local time, but it is unclear when election officials will announce the first results.
Authorities scheduled Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the respected leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013 and entrusted Maduro with the mantle of the Bolivarian Revolution. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for driving down wages, promoting hunger, sapping the oil industry and separating families through migration.
Maduro, 61, faces an opposition party that has only managed to field one candidate after years of internal party divisions and election boycotts thwarted their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
Gonzalez was elected in April to represent the opposition coalition as a last-minute replacement for opposition strongman Maria Corina Machado, who had been blocked from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court of Justice.
Machado, a former congressman, won an opposition primary in October with a landslide victory, receiving more than 90% of the vote. After being barred from running for president, she chose a university professor as her replacement, but the National Electoral Commission banned her from registering as well. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
There are eight candidates challenging Maduro in Sunday’s vote, but Gonzalez is the only one who poses a threat to Maduro’s power.
After the vote, President Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to do the same.
“No one will create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will continue to recognize the electoral jury and the official announcements, and I will ensure that they are recognized.”
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it has fallen sharply since Maduro came to power. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation of more than 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass migration.
U.S. sanctions aimed at forcing Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which the United States and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate, have deepened the crisis.
Maduro has touted economic stability as his biggest selling point to voters in this election, citing entrepreneurship, a stable currency and low inflation. The International Monetary Fund projects the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, to grow 4% this year, the fastest among Latin American countries.
But most Venezuelans have not seen an improvement in their quality of life. Many earn less than $200 a month, and families struggle to afford basic goods, some working second or third jobs. A basket of basic foods, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs an estimated $385.
Judith Cantilla, 52, voted in favor of changing those conditions.
“For me, change in Venezuela means having jobs, having security, having medicines in hospitals, good salaries for teachers and doctors,” she said, voting in Caracas’ working-class Petare district.
Meanwhile, Liana Ibarra, a manicurist in the Caracas metropolitan area, stood in line at 3 a.m. on Sunday carrying a backpack packed with water, coffee and cassava snacks, finding at least 150 people ahead of her.
“There used to be a lot of apathy towards elections, but that’s not the case anymore,” Ibarra said.
She said if Gonzalez loses, she plans to ask relatives living in the United States to sponsor her and her son’s legal immigration applications. “I can’t take it anymore,” she said.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns on Venezuela’s vast interior, which has not seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years, and promised a government that would create enough jobs to allow Venezuelans abroad to return and reunite with their families.
read more: Venezuelans fleeing insecurity hope for change and ultimately aspire to return home
After casting his vote at a polling station next to a church in an upscale area of Caracas, President Gonzalez called on the country’s military to respect “the decision of the people.”
“What we see today is a procession of joy and hope,” Gonzalez, 74, told reporters. “We turn hatred into love. We turn poverty into progress. We turn corruption into sincerity. We turn parting into reunion.”
About a quarter of Venezuelans would consider leaving the country if Maduro wins Sunday, according to an April poll by Caracas-based Delfos, which has a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points.
Most of the Venezuelans who have emigrated in the past 11 years have settled in Latin America and the Caribbean, but in recent years many have begun to turn their attention to the United States.
The two campaigns stand out not only for the political movements they represent but also for how they have addressed the hopes and fears of voters.
Maduro’s rallies have featured lively electronic meringue dancing and speeches attacking his opponents. But he faltered after leftist allies, including Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, criticized him for warning of a “bloodbath” if he lost. Maduro’s son told the Spanish newspaper El Pais that he would hand over the presidency peacefully if the ruling party was defeated, a rare admission of vulnerability that is at odds with the triumphalist tone of Maduro’s campaign.
By contrast, at the rally for Gonzalez and Machado, people cried and chanted “Freedom! Freedom!” as they passed by. People handed rosaries to devout Catholics and walked along highways and through military checkpoints to reach the rally. Some made video calls to emigrated relatives to catch a glimpse of the candidates.
“We don’t want any more Venezuelans to leave the country. To those who have left, we will do everything in our power to bring them back here and we will welcome them with open arms,” Gonzalez said Sunday.
Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman and Fabiola Sanchez contributed to this report.
