The government swore to continue its push for total political dominance of this once-prosperous OPEC nation, a move likely to trigger US sanctions and new rounds of the street fighting that has killed at least 122 and wounded nearly 2,000 since protests began in April.
Venezuela's chief prosecutor's office reported seven deaths yesterday in clashes between protesters and police across the country. Seven police officers were wounded when an explosion went off as they drove past piles of trash that had been used to blockade a street in an opposition stronghold in eastern Caracas.
Across the capital of more than 2 million people, dozens of polling places were virtually empty, including many that saw hours-long lines of thousands voting to keep the government in power over the last two decades.
By contrast, at the Poliedro sports and cultural complex in western Caracas, several thousand people waited about two hours to vote, many drawn from opposition-dominated neighbourhoods where polling places were closed.
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But at least three dozen other sites visited by The Associated Press had no more than a few hundred voters at any one time, with many virtually empty.
"It's very clear to us that the government has suffered a defeat today," said Julio Borges, president of the opposition-controlled but largely powerless National Assembly. "This vote brings us closer to the government leaving power."
Maduro called the vote for a constitutional assembly in May after a month of protests against his government, which has overseen Venezuela's descent into a devastating crisis during its four years in power.
Thanks to plunging oil prices and widespread corruption and mismanagement, Venezuela's inflation and homicide rates are among the world's highest, and widespread shortages of food and medicine have citizens dying of preventable illnesses and rooting through trash to feed themselves.
Maduro made clear in a televised address Saturday that he intends to use the assembly not just to rewrite the country's charter but to govern without limitation. Describing the vote as "the election of a power that's above and beyond every other," Maduro said he wants the assembly to strip opposition lawmakers and governors of constitutional immunity from prosecution one of the few remaining checks on ruling party power.
He said the new assembly would begin to govern within a week, with its first task in rewriting the constitution to be "a total transformation" of the office of Venezuela's chief prosecutor, a former government loyalist who has become the highest-ranking official to publicly split from the president.
"People aren't in agreement with this," said Daniel Ponza, a 33-year-old drywall contractor, as he watched a few dozen people outside a polling place in El Valle, a traditional stronghold of the ruling Chavista movement in western Caracas. "People are dying of hunger, looking for food in the trash. And I think this is just going to make things worse."
Sculptor Ricardo Avendano travelled from the opposition- dominated eastern neighbourhood of Las Mercedes to vote at the Poliedro sports and cultural complex, saying the government needed total power to control food prices and shut down protests.
"The most important thing is imposing order," he said. "If I'd been president there wouldn't be protesters in the streets. They'd be prisoners."
The government was encouraging participation in Sunday's vote with tactics that included offering social benefits like subsidised food to the poor and threatening state workers' jobs if they didn't vote.
The Trump administration has imposed successive rounds of sanctions on high-ranking members of Maduro's administration, with the support of countries including Mexico, Colombia and Panama.
Vice President Mike Pence promised on Friday that the US would take "strong and swift economic actions" if the vote went ahead. He didn't say whether the US would sanction Venezuelan oil imports, a measure with the potential to undermine Maduro but cause an even deeper humanitarian crisis here
Ahead of Sunday's vote, the opposition organised a series of work stoppages as well as a July 16 protest vote that it said drew more than 7.5 million symbolic votes against the constitutional assembly.
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