Rubén Chirino Leañez, the CEO of Meganálisis, told Breitbart News in an interview Sunday that the turnout was especially embarrassing for Nicolás Maduro’s regime because the socialists used extortion and threats, including the threat of losing access to food, to get people to the polls.
“The government was going to deploy its entire apparatus, everything: the infrastructure, the pressure, the military,” Chirino explained. “They pressured people with [threats of] losing [government-distributed] packages of food, losing social assistance, losing their jobs. And of course, that entire infrastructure creates pressure.”
Maduro regime officials were not opaque in their threats. Diosdado Cabello, a senior Maduro henchman, suspected drug lord, and television show host, stated plainly during a campaign rally: “those who don’t vote, don’t eat.”
“There’s no food for those who don’t vote. I don’t know. Those who don’t vote, don’t eat; they get put in quarantine with no eating,” Cabello said last week, evoking harrowing testimonies from survivors of Maduro’s rudimentary Chinese coronavirus quarantine who have said they did not receive food while imprisoned in abandoned motels.
Chirino added that, in addition to threats, the Maduro regime used other tactics like going door-to-door and pressuring people to leave and vote and, towards the evening, “they extended the voting time because they said there were too many people on line waiting to vote, which was false.”
Venezuela is entering a third decade of socialism, marked by extreme shortages in food, medicine, fuel, and basic goods. Dictator Nicolás Maduro placed the national food supply under the control of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) of Venezuela, which is loyal to Maduro and implicated in several major drug trafficking investigations, in 2016. This allows Maduro’s regime to control access to food in the country and thus deny it to people who do not openly support the regime. Less than a year later, reports began surfacing of large quantities of food rotting under military custody as soldiers demanded bribes for food, but civilians did not have enough money to pay for them. At the same time, reports showed a growing number of Venezuelans digging through garbage for food, killing zoo animals to eat, and brawling over small items like a bag of onions.
Meganálisis estimated that only 19.13 percent of eligible voters in Venezuela participated in Sunday’s election, meaning over 80 percent of the country boycotted the race. This means that about 16.7 million people chose not to vote, compared to the 4 million who did. The Maduro regime claimed a 31-percent participation rate.
BALANCE FINAL DE PARTICIPACIÓN REAL 6-D-2020
Abstención 80.87% pic.twitter.com/ENLO4qJDY3— Meganalisis (@Meganalisis) December 6, 2020
Chirino told Breitbart News that, taking into account voters who showed up to vote because of threats, the true turnout – meaning people who voted because they wanted to vote – was closer to 12 percent.
“When we get to a 19-percent participation rate, we’re talking about a 19 percent of which I am convinced that there is a six or seven percent that is doing it under pressure, is being extorted, that is doing it under coercive measures imposed by the state, which threatens people to participate.”
“If we are talking about people voting voluntarily, I think we are talking about a 12 or 13 percent,” Chirino concluded.
Maduro, who has not been the constitutional president of Venezuela since January 2019, organized the first National Assembly elections since 2015 on December 6. The last elections resulted in a resounding loss for Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and victories for center-left opposition parties, which campaigned together under the umbrella name “Democratic Unity Roundtable.”…
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