Venezuelans start voting for parliamentary elections despite opposition boycott

People in Venezuela are voting in parliamentary elections amid calls for a boycott by the country’s US-led opposition figure and self-proclaimed interim president Juan Guaido.

Polling stations opened at 6.30 am local time (1030 GMT) on Sunday to elect members of the 227-seat National Assembly, in a vote supported by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and denounced by Guaido as “fraudulent”.

"The time has come to vote for peace, for the country, for the future”, Maduro said in a message on his Telegram channel, shortly before voting began.

Guaido has boycotted the polls, saying "free and fair" conditions for holding elections do not exist. He has labeled the elections “a fraud”.

About 14,000 candidates from more than 100 parties and associations are contesting in Sunday’s polls. 

Opposition dissidents who criticize Guaido for calling the boycott will take part in the election.

Maduro and his allies are poised to win back control of the National Assembly in elections -- the only government branch controlled by the opposition in the deeply divided Latin American country.

The anticipated defeat of the opposition candidates in Sunday’s elections will seriously undermine the US-sponsored forces in the oil-rich country even though Guaido is currently recognized as Venezuela’s “interim president” by nearly 50 countries allied with Washington.

Venezuela’s electoral authority, appointed by the country’s Supreme Court, said more than 20 million people are eligible to vote in the elections.

Sunday’s vote comes five years after the opposition won control of the National Assembly. Foreign delegations have arrived earlier in Venezuela to monitor the election process.

Sunday’s elections come at a time when Venezuela is in a deep US-orchestrated economic and political crisis.

An election victory will provide Maduro with significant validation in the eyes of his foreign allies, helping his administration to further circumvent brutal US and EU sanctions against Venezuela.

SS