Caracas: A tense election campaign ended on Thursday in Venezuela, which is mired in uncertainty after President Nicolás Maduro warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses – which polls suggest is likely.
Thousands of people attended final rallies in the capital Caracas, about a kilometer apart, for Maduro and his opposition rival Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
The incumbent, who is seeking a third six-year term, lags far behind Gonzalez Urrutia in declared voter intent, but observers doubt he is ready to relinquish power.
In a video on Thursday, Maduro reiterated to the nation that only he can “guarantee peace and stability,” while Gonzalez Urrutia urged Venezuelans not to let “messages of hate … intimidate you.”
At Maduro’s rally, where party lackeys handed out T-shirts to the beat of music and drumming, voters greeted their candidate with a “gallo pinto” — the fighting cock sign he adopted as a symbol of strength — as they chanted, “Vamos Nico!” (Let’s go Nico.)
At a rally for Gonzalez Urrutia, supporters waved Venezuelan flags and honked their motorbikes, chanting, “Si se puede!” (Yes we can!)
Voter Mercedes Henriques, 68, told AFP she was proud to support the opposition “because we can no longer live with this dictatorship that we have.”
But her optimism was tainted by apprehension. “We pray they don’t steal the election,” she said of the regime.
If they do, they will join others on the street “for my vote, for my children,” said the pensioner, who has two of her three daughters and six grandchildren abroad.
On the other side of the political fence, Maduro supporter Raibert Pacheco, 28, told AFP his election was something “that runs in our veins”.
However, one man at the official rally told AFP he was “forced” to be there.
Maduro, who has been in office since taking over from Hugo Chávez in 2013, counts electoral authorities, top military officials and other state institutions among his supporters. Analysts told AFP that if the state apparatus intervened in the election, the opposition was likely to win.
