BUENOS AIRES | A confident Venezuelan opposition pledged to accept the outcome of nationwide gubernatorial races on Sunday even as it said the nominally impartial election authority was suppressing votes to favor candidates loyal to embattled President Nicolas Maduro.<\/b>
\nBUENOS AIRES | A confident Venezuelan opposition pledged to accept the outcome of nationwide gubernatorial races on Sunday even as it said the nominally impartial election authority was suppressing votes to favor candidates loyal to embattled President Nicolas Maduro.
While they decried the government\u2019s tactics, leaders of the anti-Maduro Democratic Unity (MUD) bloc were careful not to sow doubt on an election likely to deal a crushing blow to the socialist leader and set Venezuela on a course to his ouster in presidential elections slated for next year.
Opposition leader Julio Borges, president of the disenfranchised National Assembly, noted on Sunday afternoon that Election Day itself had gone smoothly except for minor \u201cincidents.\u201d
\u201cPeople have turned out in droves to vote,\u201d Mr. Borges said. \u201cThe incidents were very isolated, not massive.\u201d
Some 18 million citizens were called to select governors in all 23 states, only three of which are currently led by Maduro foes. Analysts and surveys predicted opposition victories in at least 16 \u2014 and perhaps as many as 21 \u2014 with the extent of the landslide hinging primarily on turnout.
Voting was set to end at 6 p.m., but final tallies were likely to become available hours, or potentially days, later, with the National Electoral Council (CNE) known to delay publication of results unfavorable to the regime.
Outrage over the council\u2019s last-minute decision to relocate more than 200 polling places, meanwhile, ultimately may have helped the opposition\u2019s turn-out-the-vote effort, Ramon Guevara, MUD\u2019s gubernatorial candidate in the western state of Merida, told The Washington Times.
\u201cPeople who hadn\u2019t been determined to participate have [now] expressed the decision to go out and vote, no matter where they\u2019ve been sent,\u201d said Mr. Guevara, whose state saw the greatest number of changes \u2014 with more than 10 percent of all polling places affected.
To justify the move, the electoral council cited alleged \u201cacts of violence during the election of the National Constituent Assembly,\u201d a controversial, pro- Maduro superbody whose July 30 selection the opposition had boycotted.
Critics said this so-called \u201ccrazy mouse\u201d strategy, designed to confuse and intimidate voters, was just one of many ploys to limit what was shaping up to be a crushing defeat.
\u201cMy polling place for the past 24 years will not be working this time, and I am being sent to a different, small place,\u201d said Yorelis Acosta de Oliveira, a resident of the opposition stronghold of Miranda and a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas.
Voters of her middle-class neighborhood were forced to cast their ballots in \u201cbarrios\u201d \u2014 the often crime-ridden working-class neighborhoods where Mr. Maduro retains comparatively high levels of support.
\u201cThe [CNE] is trying to keep people from voting because we are afraid of the city,\u201d Ms. Acosta said. \u201cI don\u2019t know the area where [we] go to vote. It\u2019s an area that can be dangerous.\u201d
Nevertheless, anecdotal evidence suggested solid turnout, with voters waiting in line for up to four hours \u2014 a picture starkly different from the July 30 election, whose legitimacy was called into question by voting machine maker Smartmatic.
\u201c[Today] will definitively unmask what the turnout [really] was in that process,\u201d Mr. Guevara said. \u201cBut what\u2019s most important is that in Merida, and in the rest of the country, we have our backers at the polling places.\u201d
National MUD spokesman Freddy Guevara, who is no relation to the gubernatorial candidate, on Saturday had underlined his bloc\u2019s trust in the system.
\u201cWe have a system that will indicate to us if any of the machines were tampered with,\u201d Freddy Guevara warned. \u201cOur teams are organized, and we know what we are up against.\u201d
Mr. Maduro \u2019s United Socialists, meanwhile, were not showing any open signs of resignation ahead of the vote. They were, in fact, unlikely to suffer a \u201ctotal defeat\u201d given their remaining strongholds in Venezuela \u2019s rural areas, Ms. Acosta said.
\u201cThroughout the week, the government has dispatched its campaign, with giveaways of bags of food [and] the sale of cheap food,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd in the interior, they can [still] subdue \u2014 they can buy loyalties in this manner.\u201d
Even so, rural Merida \u2014 governed since 2000 by allies of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez \u2014 has learned its lesson, said Ramon Guevara, the candidate. And no matter the obstacles, he remains convinced that elections, not force, will mark Venezuela \u2019s way out of the abyss.
\u201cWe don\u2019t have the slightest doubt that the opposition will win here [today] in Merida,\u201d he said. \u201c[And] a military coup doesn\u2019t make any sense. For us democrats, the only weapon is the constitutional way, the electoral way.\u201d
Maduro foes promise to respect election\u2019s outcome<\/p>\n

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