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Groton Daily Independent
Monday, July 31, 2017 ~ Vol. 25 - No. 031 ~ 18 of 42
Sunday’s vote was 41.53 percent, or 8,089,320 people. Members of the opposition said they believed between 2 million and 3 million people voted and one well-respected independent analysis put the number at 3.6 million.
The electoral council’s vote counts in the past have been seen as reliable and generally accurate, but the widely mocked announcement appeared cer- tain to escalate the polarization and political con ict paralyzing the country.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the governor of the central state of Miranda, urged Venezuelans to protest Monday. Maduro said he would use the assembly’s powers to bar opposition candidates from running in gubernato- rial elections in December unless they sit with his party to negotiate an end to hostilities that have generated four monthsofproteststhathavekilledat least125andwoundednearly2,000.
Voters wait outside of a poll station to enter to cast their ballot during the election for a constitutional assembly in Caracas, Venezuela, Sunday, July 30, 2017. President Nicolas Maduro asked for global acceptance on Sunday ashecastanunusualpre-dawnvoteforanall-powerful constitutionalassemblythathisopponentsfearhe’lluse to replace Venezuelan democracy with a single-party au- thoritariansystem.(APPhoto/ArianaCubillos)
“The people have delivered the
constitutionalassembly,”Madurosaid
on national television. “More than 8
million in the middle of threats ... it’s
when imperialism challenges us that we prove ourselves worthy of the blood of the liberators that runs through the veins of men, women, children and young people.”
Across the capital, Venezuelans had appeared to be staying away from the polls in huge numbers in protest against the vote. Venezuela’s chief prosecutor’s of ce reported 10 deaths in new rounds of the clashes between protesters and police. Seven police of cers were wounded when a ery explosion went off as they drove past piles of trash that had been used to blockade a street in an opposition stronghold in eastern Caracas.
“If it wasn’t a tragedy ... if it didn’t mean more crisis, the electoral council’s number would almost make you laugh,” opposition leader Freddy Guevara said on Twitter. Maduro has threatened that one of the constitutional assembly’s rst acts would be jailing Guevara for inciting violence.
An exit poll based on surveys from 110 voting centers by New York investment bank Torino Capital and a Venezuela public opinion company estimated 3.6 million people voted, or about 18.5 percent of registered voters. “The results thus suggest that the government maintains an important loyal core of supporters that it can mobilize in both electoral and non-electoral scenarios,” the report concluded.
The same exit poll also noted that Venezuela has an estimated 2.6 million government employees, “sug- gesting that a large fraction of the votes could have not been voluntary.”
Several nations including Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Spain, Britain and the United States said they would not recognize Sunday’s vote. The Trump administration again promised “strong and swift actions” against Venezuelan of cials, including the 545 participants in the constitutional assembly, many of them low-ranking party members. The U.S. did not say whether it would sanction Venezuelan oil imports, a measure with the potential to destabilize Maduro’s government and deepen the country’s humanitarian crisis.