Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is expected to win a second six-year term in today's election, despite a deepening crisis that's made food scarce and inflation soar as oil production in the once wealthy nation plummets.
More than 1 million Venezuelans have abandoned their country for a better life abroad in recent years, while those staying behind wait in line for hours to buy subsidized food and withdraw cash that's almost impossible to find.
While polls show Venezuelans overwhelmingly blame Maduro for their mounting troubles, he's still heavily favoured to win thanks to a boycott of the election by his main rivals amid huge distrust of the nation's electoral council, which is controlled by government loyalists.
Maduro, setting an example for government supporters who he called on to vote early, cast his ballot in Caracas shortly after fireworks and loud speakers blasting a military hymn roused Venezuelans from sleep around 5 am local time.
He said Venezuelans would provide an example of democracy to the world and brushed back suggestions he was taking the country down an authoritarian path.
"It's offensive when they say the Venezuelan people are falling under dictatorship," he said after voting, adding that if he were to win the election he would seek an understanding with his opponents on a way forward for the crisis-wracked country. "I'm going to stubbornly and obsessively insist in dialogue for peace."
Blasting Maduro as the "candidate of hunger," he has campaigned on a promise to dollarize wages pulverized by five-digit inflation, accept humanitarian aid and seek assistance from the International Monetary Fund all proposals Maduro has rejected as tantamount to surrendering to the U.S. "empire."
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