[ad_1]
Half-empty voting centers marked the last day of the symbolic consultation called by the opposition leader Juan Guaidó, although the opposition claimed a “historic” victory by highlighting a massive online participation that “saturated” the channels available to vote.
The “participation in the consultation exceeded by much fraud that they mounted” on December 6, Guaidó pointed out on Twitter, alluding to the legislative elections boycotted by the bulk of the opposition, after which Chavismo wiped out more than 91% of the 277 chamber seats.
Due to the “high participation by Telegram, the platform collapsed,” said Blanca Rosa Mármol, of the organizing committee.
However, Guaidó, who denounced the government’s “censorship” and the lack of support from the country’s television media to broadcast his call, failed to reissue the massive mobilizations that accompanied him during 2019.
In Caracas, the points installed to deposit the votes remained mostly clear, despite requests from those who supported the online consultation to accompany the day in person.
With less popularity than he enjoyed when he was proclaimed president in charge of Venezuela in January 2019, Guaidó, recognized as interim president by fifty countries, with the United States at the head, played his last card with this symbolic consultation before he legally complete your term as a member of parliament.
In the so-called “popular consultation” Venezuelans are asked if they support “all mechanisms of national and international pressure” in favor of “free presidential and parliamentary elections” and if they reject the legislative elections on Sunday.
It is not the first time that the opposition has invited a consultation process.
A similar initiative took place in July 2017 in rejection of the Constituent Assembly convened by President Nicolás Maduro, after months of protests that left some 125 dead. Despite the symbolic plebiscite, the 100% Chavista body was installed, assuming legislative functions in practice.
“Intimidation” and “skepticism”
The opposition denounced “intimidation” by “armed civilian groups called collectives used by the regime (…) At Cota 905 (Caracas) they had to withdraw the consultation point for intimidation,” Deputy Rafael Veloz told AFP.
“The communal councils came out to run us,” said Deputy Jesús Abreu, for his part, from Catia, a popular area in the west of the capital where groups operate that, he said, “prowled” early to intimidate them.
José Nelson Castellanos, 56, approached a plaza in Chacao, a well-off traditionally oppositional area of Caracas, to express his rejection of the Maduro government.
“If we are not satisfied with the situation we have in the country, we must do something, I know that many people are not even stopping this type of thing anymore because they are already skeptical about the results, but something must be done,” he told the AFP.
“Abstention dose for all”
Both the consultation called by Guaidó and the legislative elections sponsored by Maduro registered a high level of abstention, Castillo-Molleda points out.
“The political leadership that represents the opposition and the government had its dose of abstentionism, both sectors lost the street, they are not connected with the problems of the people,” he stresses.
The analyst Rafael Álvarez Loscher, from the IURISCORP firm, considers that the “opposition has not known how to channel discontent because it has not achieved its objectives, and that has demoralized the people, who although they are against Maduro, few see the need to write your name on something that has no legal or political effect ”.
Maduro, meanwhile, downplays the call of Guaidó, whom he calls a “phony” and “puppet” of the United States.
“No one could think that an online consultation has legal, constitutional value, it only has informational value,” said the president.
In the opinion of the analyst Jesús Castillo-Molleda, both on December 6 and 12 “he won abstention, which means that there is no credibility towards Maduro or Guaidó.”
[ad_2]
