Thousands of Venezuelan candidates were competing yesterday in local elections that could forecast the popularity of President Hugo Chavez's political allies ahead of key congressional elections in December.
In other recent votes, opposition leaders have called boycotts, saying the country's electoral council is stacked in Chavez's favor. But this time, the major opposition parties are urging voters to go to the polls to demonstrate unity.
"It doesn't matter if we have a crooked electoral council," said opposition lawmaker Henry Ramos Allup, who is up for re-election in December. "We have to go out and vote."
While some tiny opposition parties have urged voters to boycott yesterday's vote, all of the major parties are calling for participation.
Electoral officials insist their council is independent and that thorough preparations have been made for fair and transparent elections.
The voting will decide thousands of city council and parish board posts across the country, plus two provincial mayors and one governor, in the sparsely populated southern state of Amazonas.
More than 38,700 candidates are contesting the elections, some with national party affiliations and others without.
Many Venezuelans, including Chavez, are predicting a low turnout. Only 23 percent cast ballots in the last municipal elections in 2000.
"We know that abstention will be high. That is a characteristic of local elections," Chavez said recently.
He pledged to "fight" to encourage Venezuelans to reverse the trend.
But Chavez supporter Jose Liendo, a 37-year-old carpenter, said he is tired of voting year after year for a number of allied candidates "who don't help Chavez or us."
A Zurich city councilor has apologized and reportedly sought police protection against threats after she fired a sport pistol at an auction poster of a 14th-century Madonna and child painting, and posted images of their bullet-ridden faces on social media. Green-Liberal party official Sanija Ameti, 32, put the images on Instagram over the weekend before quickly pulling them down. She later wrote on social media that she had been practicing shots from about 10m and only found the poster as “big enough” for a suitable target. “I apologize to the people who were hurt by my post. I deleted it immediately when I
The governor of Ohio is to send law enforcement and millions of dollars in healthcare resources to the city of Springfield as it faces a surge in temporary Haitian migrants. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday said that he does not oppose the Temporary Protected Status program under which about 15,000 Haitians have arrived in the city of about 59,000 people since 2020, but said the federal government must do more to help affected communities. On Monday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost directed his office to research legal avenues — including filing a lawsuit — to stop the federal government from sending
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
RSS