Venezuelan vote Sunday seen as last chance to stop power grab

Venezuelans vote Sunday in a referendum that the opposition hopes will mark a watershed – and the government insists means nothing at all.

Ballots will ask voters if they support the government’s plan to elect an unpopular National Constituent Assembly that would overhaul the 1999 constitution.

Critics, including some in the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, fear that President Nicolas Maduro would use the assembly to tighten his hold on the South American country and further delay – or cancel – elections.

“The Constituent Assembly is a fraud, because it doesn’t resolve any of the problems that Venezuelans are facing, like hunger and crime,” said opposition congressman Omar Avila, with the Unidad Vision Venezuela party. “This is another trick to try to hold onto power . until we simply can’t take it anymore.”

Organizers of Sunday’s vote are hoping that if they can get millions of people to reject the deal, the government might be persuaded to drop its plans.

That seems unlikely.

Maduro and his supporters say Sunday’s referendum is illegitimate. And they’re pushing forward with their July 30 vote to elect 527 members of the assembly, known as ANC for its name in Spanish, in a process designed to stack the body with the party faithful.

This week, Maduro reiterated his claims that the ANC was “the only solution” to bring peace to the nation after more than 100 days of anti-government protests in which more than 90 people have died.

With about 20 million registered voters in Venezuela, organizers of Sunday’s referendum are hoping that as many as 10 million will reject the ANC.

The unofficial referendum has all the hallmarks of a major election: There will be voting centers nationwide and in more than 75 countries. There will be eight voting centers in Miami alone.

And former presidents of Costa Rica, Colombia, Bolivia and Mexico are expected to act as international observers.

And yet the Venezuelan government insists it’s all political theater. The administration doesn’t recognize the opposition-controlled National Assembly, so it contends that congress didn’t have the right to call the vote in the first place. And the National Electoral Council says the results are not legally binding.

Instead, the administration seems to be trying to squelch turnout by holding a “trial run” of its own ANC vote the same day, raising the specter of partisan street clashes.

Even those who favor the election have doubts about its impact.

“There’s no way this vote will allow us to escape from this government,” said Avila, the opposition deputy. Even if a huge turnout led Maduro to resign, “we would be stuck with the vice president” through the end of Maduro’s term in 2019.

The ANC will have the power to call snap presidential elections. But because it will be stacked with loyalists, that’s not going to happen, Avila said.