Venezuelan opposition voters band to safeguard election, warning of the ruling party’s tricks

SABANETA, Venezuela (AP) — Tears roll down the face of Tanyia Colmenares when she recalls her truncated dream of being a lawyer, which ended after two semesters in law school when she had to drop out to survive Venezuela’s complex crisis.

While she never got to defend a client in court, she has agreed to try to defend something far greater at the end of this month: Venezuela’s democracy.

Colmenares is among the thousands of supporters of Venezuela’s typically fractured opposition who have agreed to organize, mobilize and support voters during the highly anticipated July 28 presidential election.

The main opposition coalition is banking on their efforts, some led by parties and others formed organically, to get people to the polls to cast ballots as well as to deter government actors from intimidating or coercing voters.

The lack of a truly independent electoral authority makes such work critical for the alliance’s ability to verify or contest the outcome. The Unitary Platform coalition hopes the mere presence of large numbers of watchful voters outside polling places will neutralize some ruling party strategies that in the past left them without representatives inside the facilities, kept them away from vote counts and rendered them voiceless in the event of irregularities.

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The western Venezuela city of Sabaneta is the cradle of Chavismo — the self-described socialist movement founded by the late President Hugo Chávez that has dominated Venezuela since the turn of the century. It is also where Colmenares is banding with nine other neighbors to promote the vote and ensure opposition supporters reach their polling place. They are ready to find voters rides, provide support should they encounter ruling-party checkpoints or hand out water or food if long lines form.

“Whether through social media, calls, text messages (or) personally, whatever way is easier for people, the important thing is to engage with the community and get the job done,” Colmenares, a stay-at-home mother of three, said after a neighborhood group meeting earlier this month.

This month’s election is unlike any the ruling party has faced since Chávez was elected president in December 1998 and began transitioning Venezuela into what he described as the 21st century’s socialism.

Now led by Chávez’s heir, President Nicolás Maduro, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela is as unpopular as ever among many voters. Weak oil prices, corruption and economic mismanagement by the government plunged the country into a crisis that has lasted more than 11 years. Young people have had to give up college dreams, children have gone hungry and millions have emigrated.

Economic sanctions imposed last decade failed to topple Maduro, as the United States and other governments hoped, but they contributed to Venezuela’s decline.

Opposition politicians for years boycotted elections they saw as rigged, but they overcame deep divisions to coalesce behind a single candidate this time. They also kept that spot on the ballot despite sustained government repression, including the ban from the race of María Corina Machado, the strongest challenger to Maduro’s bid for a third term in office.

Machado, who overwhelmingly won the coalition’s October primary, is now backing the coalition’s replacement candidate, former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia.

Pollsters project up to 13 million people will cast ballots July 28.

The opposition estimates that more than a half million people have registered for its somewhat loose structure of neighborhood groups nicknamed “comanditos” — or tiny commandos.

Group members, by now all familiar with the ruling party’s efforts to tilt the balance on election days, expect gas stations to not open, power outages to affect opposition strongholds, police and Maduro loyalists to block roads, and the military to limit access to polling centers.

Some groups are holding raffles and selling traditional tamale-like hallacas to raise funds to print promotional materials for their neighborhoods and cook meals for opposition supporters. Others are storing gasoline at home and offering their cars or motorcycles to transport voters.

All have been instructed by the coalition to remain outside polling centers after voting to fight fear among voters and their voting center representatives, whose duties include securing a copy of tally certificates printed by electronic voting machines after polls close. Ruling party loyalists, including armed gangs, are known to have intimidated voting center representatives, known as witnesses, into staying home or abandoning their duties halfway through an election day.

Electoral rules allow parties to have one witness for every voting station set up at polling places.

“We have agreed as a comandito that after we vote, we are going to monitor and be a guarantor of the votes on July 28,” local organizer Fidel Ortega said during a group meeting. “God willing, we are going to defend our right to vote as Venezuelans. On the 28th, we vote; on the 29th, we celebrate; and from then on, we all win.”

Ortega estimated opposition supporters have formed at least 40 neighborhood groups in the municipality that includes Sabaneta, which sits in a vast tropical grassland plain.

The government-controlled National Electoral Council chose to set up about 36,000 voting machines. Many polling places are spread thin, making it harder for the opposition to monitor them. About a third of registered voters in this election are assigned to polling places with only one or two voting machines.

The ruling party has traditionally obtained the bulk of its vote in these smaller polling places, and for this election, the electoral council added 1,700 single-machine centers. Reports of ruling party efforts to coerce and control voting during previous elections have mostly been associated with these one- and two-machine vote centers.

Although thousands have registered in their neighborhood groups, fear of retribution should the data be leaked has kept some opposition supporters from formally joining the mobilizing effort. But they are still managing groups of friends, family and coworkers with whom they plan to coordinate on July 28.

“We must accompany people so that they lose their fear,” said high school teacher Edgar Cuevas, who will work the polls on election day. “Before they did overshadow us with their armed gangs and their stuff, but now, if 10 gang members arrive, well, they will find 20 of us.”