Venezuela National Assembly Elections Too Close to Call

[naaman fletcher]

Venezuela National Assembly Elections Too Close to Call

JAY: So right now, in terms of the polling, what's expected in this election?

WILPERT: Well, it's very different difficult to say, because polls in Venezuela tend to be divided, depending on the political affiliation of the pollsters. And it's very difficult to find neutral polls. So opposition polls tend to say that the opposition is going to win; pro-Chávez polls tend to say that Chávez is going to win. My guess is that it's going to be a very close call, it's going to be a very close election, because there's—on the one hand, Chávez is still a very popular individual, but he's not on the ballot, and there's a lot of problems in Venezuela right now with the recent recession Venezuela's coming out of and with the discovery of a corruption scandal. So there's some dissatisfaction. And so my guess is that a lot of people who would normally vote for Chávez, instead of voting for the opposition, because nobody—still the opposition is extremely unpopular, instead of voting for Chávez, they're going to abstain. And so that could make it a very close call.

JAY: So the people that might abstain are people that voted for Chávez in the past, and their main critique being what? That things have not happened quickly enough? There hasn't been enough changes? I mean, one of the critiques will be is that Chávez controlled the National Assembly and the national government, so there wasn't opposition to passing any legislation. So people are saying, well, then, why hasn't there been more successes?

WILPERT: Yes, that's certainly the case. I mean, one thing to consider, of course, is that Chávez has been in office for 11 years now, and that is a very long time for somebody to maintain the high levels of popularity that Chávez has maintained. And so there's a certain amount of fatigue that has set in with the people, especially—not necessarily with Chávez, but with the people around Chávez, and with the recurrence of certain problems, especially this corruption scandal that I mentioned earlier. And there was also another problem was the electricity rationing. Venezuela had experienced a drought, a very severe drought last year, and had to ration electricity because all of its electricity comes from one—practically all of it comes from one hydroelectric dam. And so those are a lot of problems to have accumulated, and particularly in an election year.

http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/5617

This must be an opposition newspaper.