Caracas Venezuela.– Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his rival Edmundo Gonzalez closed their campaigns on Thursday with rallies, both claiming victory and the opposition expressing confidence that the country’s armed forces will respect the results.
Gonzalez has attracted significant support, including from former ruling party supporters, but the opposition and some observers have questioned whether the vote will be fair, saying decisions by electoral authorities and the arrests of some opposition campaign staff are intended to hamper the vote.
“We are going to win and we are going to get paid and we trust that our Armed Forces will enforce the will of our people. Millions of Venezuelans want change,” Gonzalez said earlier in a press conference alongside opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino said Wednesday that the military sector will do what is within the framework of the so-called Plan República, which provides security for electoral centers and material, and will await the results of the National Electoral Council.
Later in the campaign closing, Gonzalez and Machado urged voters to go to the polls early and stay all day after casting their ballots, adding that Venezuelans will witness a change.
Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat, inherited the support of Machado, a hugely popular opposition leader who was reaffirmed in January as a candidate for public office despite a landslide victory in the opposition primary in October.
“I want freedom,” said Yuliany Suarez, 23, a pharmacy student at a private university and supermarket employee, at the closing rally of the opposition campaign on an avenue in southeastern Caracas.
Regarding the election, “the result is uncertain,” added Suárez, who was wearing a band of the opposition candidate, but “I have faith in Edmundo.”
Maduro, 61, who has been in power since 2013 and is seeking a third six-year term, has said the country has the most transparent electoral system in the world and warned of the possibility of a “bloodbath” if he loses.
Maduro’s government has seen economic collapse, the migration of about a third of the population and severely deteriorated diplomatic relations, topped off by sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and other countries that have impacted the oil industry.
Across town, at the closing ceremony for the ruling party, Luisa Medina, a 51-year-old public employee, said that “it suits us if Maduro wins” because “it is the only government that has taken us, the poor, into account.”
“He has been very good and has continued the project” of the late President Hugo Chavez, added Medina, who was wearing a white T-shirt that read “I choose Maduro.”
Hundreds of buses lined Caracas’ central Libertador Avenue after transporting Maduro supporters, sometimes from other states, according to witnesses who spoke to Reuters.
The White House on Thursday expressed concern about the threat of violence in the election and warned President Maduro of the need to hold fair elections, free of political repression or intimidation.
“Small, medium and large entrepreneurs, both national and international, know that their investments are only guaranteed with us,” the president said on Thursday.
“I don’t owe anything to anyone, I am a president totally independent of the people, free and sovereign,” he added at the closing event of his campaign, where he said he would call for a national dialogue on Monday.
Machado, a 56-year-old industrial engineer, has thrown herself into campaigning for Gonzalez, who will appear on the three-party ballot. She urged voters to go to polling stations early on Sunday and stay all day after voting.
He also asked those who have motorcycles and cars to help transport other voters whose polling stations are far from their homes.
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