Venezuelans vote in election challenging Maduro’s grip on power

These concerns have been exacerbated by Maduro telling his supporters he will win “whatever it takes.”

But Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab told the BBC’s NewsHour that the country’s electoral system was “impossible to rig” and “one of the best voting systems in the world”.

After early voting in the capital, Caracas, on Sunday, President Maduro vowed to “ensure” that the results announced by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) are respected.

The CNE, the body that organizes the elections and publishes the official results, is controlled by government supporters.

The party’s president, Elvis Amoroso, is a personal ally of Maduro.

“The words of the electoral judges are sacred,” Maduro added to reporters.

Gonzalez, who also voted in Caracas later the same day, described the day as “a day of reconciliation for all Venezuelans”, adding that “the time for change has come”.

He promised that if he won the election he would “do everything possible” to bring back people who fled the country after the economic collapse.

Venezuelans began flocking to polling stations before voting was scheduled to begin at 6 a.m. local time (10 a.m. GMT), with long queues forming at polling stations across the country.

Tensions flared outside polling stations in Caracas, with voters glaring and clashing as they queued to wait for the polling doors to open, Reuters reported.

Voting is due to close at 18:00 local time (22:00 GMT) with the results expected to be announced within hours.

There are only a very limited number of independent election observers monitoring the vote in the country: four from the United Nations and a small technical team from the US-based Carter Center.

The head of the electoral commission, a close ally of President Maduro, cancelled an invitation for European Union observers to attend.

Former Argentine President Alberto Fernández was also not invited after he said Maduro’s government should accept the possibility of losing the election.

But Maduro has welcomed hundreds of guests from countries allied to his government and said they would “accompany” him to the vote.

Meanwhile, the opposition mobilized thousands of people to act as witnesses at each polling station.

The opposition is optimistic despite facing many challenges, including constant harassment since the beginning of the year and the arrest of more than 100 people linked to the opposition movement.

The party claims its candidate has a large lead over President Maduro in opinion polls and that he cannot “steal the election.”

The government has denied opinion polls cited by the opposition and said its candidate was in the lead.

Maduro himself used strong language ahead of the election, warning of “bloodshed” if he lost.

The comments drew an unusual rebuke from Brazil’s leftist leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who said Maduro should learn that “if you win, you stay in power, but if you lose, you lose power”.

Maduro has used the image of a cockfighting as a symbol of his election campaign, lending it a combative air.

“We have weathered thousands of storms. No storm could ever defeat us, and they never will,” he said at the closing rally, referring to some of the challenges he has overcome during his 11 years in power.

He then thwarted an attempt by opposition leader Juan Guaido to step down by declaring himself the legitimate president after a 2018 re-election widely dismissed as neither free nor fair.

While Guaido has the backing of more than 50 countries, including the United States and the European Union, Maduro can count on the loyalty of Venezuela’s security forces.

Eventually, Guaido’s parallel government faded and Maduro used it to portray himself as the “defender of Venezuelan sovereignty,” a point he made at his final rally.

“On Sunday we will prove it to the fascists and imperialists. We will shout: ‘Live Venezuela, our beloved homeland,'” he said.

But despite the combative rhetoric, many of Maduro’s critics feel the election – the first in more than a decade in which most of the opposition is united behind a single candidate and not boycotting the vote – may be their best chance to remove Maduro from power.

They overcame many obstacles on their way to the polls, not the least of which was the fact that their chosen candidate, Maria Corina Machado, was barred from running in elections.

In record time, those wanting a change of government rallied behind her successor, 74-year-old Edmundo Gonzalez.

One of the opposition’s campaign promises is that if they win the election, they will rebuild the country and allow millions of Venezuelans who fled the political and economic crisis under Maduro to return home.

The election will be closely watched in the United States and Latin American countries where Venezuelans have fled in large numbers, with 7.8 million Venezuelans in exile and polls suggest that number could rise if Maduro wins.