Six out of ten voters did not go to the polls, while Sunday’s regional marked the return of opposition parties after the boycott of the previous elections.
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No surprise: Venezuela’s map is red. On the occasion of the regional elections on Sunday, November 21, the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has indeed won twenty of the twenty-three states at stake and the capital, Caracas, which returns to a woman, Carmen Melezz.
Not surprisingly, abstention was the main number of the day, with 58% of the voters who stayed at home. The figure was, however, this time, very expected: the ballot has indeed marked the return to the polls of the opposition parties who had boycotted the presidential election of 2018 and the parliamentarians of 2020. But the radical right, embodied by Leopoldo Lopez and Maria Corina Machado, continued to advocate for abstention. “The question is whether, voting, we accelerate the fall of the regime or if, on the contrary, it is deferred because it is legitimate,” had tweeted M me Machado Sunday morning. Figure of the opposition on the international scene, Juan Guaido maintained throughout the campaign an ambiguous position.
The results were announced at midnight, six hours after closing polling stations and counting 90.21% of newsletters. The other results – namely the name of the 334 mayors and the more than 2,500 advisers – have not been communicated, with the exception of that of Caracas.
“No serious incident”
“The day took place in peace, without any serious incident noticing the democratic ballot,” said the President of the National Electoral Council, Pedro Calzadilla, before announcing the results. A little earlier in the day, Isabel Santos, Head of the EU Observation Mission, had also welcomed the progress of the ballot. The presence of this mission, the first in fifteen years, is one of the wages that the opposition had requested to participate in the ballot. The mission must give a preliminary report from Tuesday.
In front of the cameras that accompanied him vote in a school of the military base of Fuerte Tiuna, in Caracas, the President, Nicolas Maduro, acknowledged that the EU’s mission had been “up” until now. A few hours ago, the head of state had recalled in vibrant terms that Venezuela was a sovereign country that had a lesson to receive anyone.
In this sunny Sunday morning, the voters did not jostle in front of the Caracas polls. Two streets of Plaza Francia, in the elegant district of Altamira, Simon, 27, came in jogging: “I vote because the vote is a right,” he explains. And because it was is the only way to let Nicolas Maduro know that Venezuela is not happy. “
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