But fines in Venezuela can be more severe than most: if you don’t vote, you won’t eat.
“There is no food for those who do not vote,” said Diosdado Cabello, one of President Nicolas Maduro’s most powerful allies, during a campaign rally on Monday. “Whoever does not vote, does not eat. ‘Quarantine’ without food will be enforced,” he told cheerful people.
Venezuelans will hold elections on Sunday as the country elects a new parliament, known as the National Assembly. Currently led by opposition leader Juan Gowde, who is accepted by more than 60 countries – including the United States – as Venezuela’s interim president, the National Assembly is widely seen as the country’s last democratically elected organization.
Before many people believed the vote, Cabello’s remarks were just a joke, but it did not take long for his most feared followers, armed paramilitary groups, to become known as “Collectivos”.
This criminal gang has plagued some of Venezuela’s poorest neighbors and played a key role in keeping Maduro in power. In Barrio, the largest slum in Venezuela and Latin America, residents say they began receiving threats soon after Cabello’s speech.
“They came around and told us that a bus would come and pick us up, take us to the polling station,” the woman, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, told CNN.
“If they do not come, I will stop taking my CLAP box,” he said, referring to the Venezuelan government’s occasional distribution of subsidized essentials, such as flour and rice, to the country’s poorest people.
Why should we care?
Developed due to years of mismanagement and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela’s economy is still in a downward spiral, largely because the output of the country’s oil industry – which OPEC says accounts for% of its exports – continues to decline.
Going in the opposite direction, inflation reached 4,087%. Across the country, the dollar has now replaced the bolivar as the main currency, and businesses that were once afraid to advertise their products in American currency are now openly doing so. Even in Venezuela’s Berry, Daler is now king.
What’s going to happen on Sunday?
Despite the constituency’s position against the lone elected Maduro, turnout for Sunday’s election is still expected to be low, as main opposition candidates have withdrawn and called on the people to boycott the vote.
He cites the absence of observers from the United States and the European Union, but also a government-controlled Supreme Court decision that removed Gaddy and others from the leadership of their own parties, and replaced them with legislators with known ties to Maduro.
“There are no elections on December 6, there is fraud,” Guade said on Thursday, urging people to vote instead of his “five consultants,” which he and his allies are planning to hold on December 12.
“The partnership in December is to vote for fraud; it collaborates with the dictatorship,” he added, but recent polls suggest his initiative is unlikely to participate too much.
Maduro, on the other hand, has called on the people to come out and vote, promising to step down if the United Socialist Party Venezuela (PSUV) does not win the election.
“I reiterate my opposition to Venezuela. I accept the challenge. If they win the parliamentary elections on December 6, I will leave,” he said in a televised speech on Tuesday. “But if we win, let the people continue to work and deepen the great changes that the homeland needs.”
That is the unlikely outcome of how the Venezuelan president erected barriers in his favor, effectively removed the opposition from the argument and threatened the most sensitivities in voting on election day.
What does it mean to oppose?
As Maduro prepares to handle the last democratically elected assembly in Venezuela, what this means for Gaida’s presidential claim is still uncertain.
Nearly two years after he embarked on the path to overthrow Maduro’s government, Gaida seems to have lost the support of many who still want to change the country.
“People don’t think it represents a compromise,” an opposition union leader told CNN. “And there are solutions that people need.”
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