CARACAS, Venezuela _ Mariana Leal won't vote in Sunday's presidential election because she believes the fix is in for President Nicolas Maduro to win re-election. Besides, the physical therapist from Caracas has something better to do: pack for her imminent departure from Venezuela.
"These elections don't mean anything," said Leal, 29, as she prepared to sell her last possessions in her east Caracas apartment before leaving for Colombia. "There won't be any real change. To the contrary, the deterioration of the country will accelerate."
Leal's intention to skip voting and determination to leave her native country are typical of the sentiments of many Venezuelans before Sunday's election in which Maduro is expected to win his race against former Lara state Gov. Henri Falcon and evangelist preacher Javier Bertucci.
Disgust with Maduro among Venezuelans is high because of the lack of food and medical care, annual inflation of 14,000 percent and a poverty rate that now encompasses 80 percent of the population. Reports of widespread hunger and unemployment are common.
Originally scheduled for the end of this year, the election was moved up on orders of the Constitutional Assembly, a legislative body set up by Maduro after the democratically elected National Assembly was effectively neutered by several rulings by Supreme Court judges loyal to the president that international observers criticized as anti-democratic.
According to a recent opinion poll by the Meganalisis firm, Maduro had an approval rating is only 15.3 percent among those questioned. "They want to stigmatize me as a dictator, but I couldn't care less," Maduro said in a televised address last week.
Leal, who is married with an infant son, is one of the thousands of disaffected Venezuelans in the process of "burning their boats" _ selling all their possessions and cutting all ties to start new lives in other countries. Having sold all her remaining belongings except her bed, her baby's crib and a refrigerator, she plans to join her husband in Colombia this summer.
According to the International Organization for Migration, an estimated 900,000 Venezuelans migrated to other countries from 2015 to 2017 to escape the collapsed economy and repressive government. The flow of migrants through Colombia over the first three months of the year tripled over the comparable period last year, border authorities said.
Abstentions are likely to be high among the 20 million eligible voters given the low voter confidence in the Maduro-stacked National Electoral Council and the lack of international monitors at the polls, according to a survey by Andres Bello Catholic University.
The Democratic Union bloc of opposition parties has urged its followers to boycott the election, considering it fraudulent. The U.S., the European Union and neighboring countries, including Colombia, have said they will not recognize the election result.
Maduro was named by President Hugo Chavez as his successor shortly before Chavez died in March 2013. The next month, the former bus driver and union organizer narrowly won election over opposition leader Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state, who claimed there were dozens of balloting irregularities that were not investigated by the National Electoral Council.
Since then, declining oil prices, sanctions against top government officials for alleged complicity in drug trafficking and missed payments on foreign debt obligations have caused the once-prosperous economy to implode. Total economic activity has shrunk for three straight years.
Last week, the Kellogg's cereal company added its name to the long list of multinational companies closing operations because of the unstable currency and diminished purchasing power of Venezuelans. Previous departures include Toyota, Kimberly Clark and Clorox.
Falcon, a 57-year old former army sergeant, was an early follower of Chavez and participated in the failed 1992 coup that Chavez led. He later broke with chavismo and now is trying to capitalize on the discontent voters feel under Maduro by promising to free political prisoners, rehabilitate the failing state oil company and dollarize the economy.
But Falcon has been criticized for breaking the opposition's boycott of the election. To win over skeptics, he has promised to name Capriles his interior minister if he wins Sunday.
Falcon may be encouraged by recent opinion polls that indicate more people are saying they will vote than last month, when some surveys found only 32 percent said they intended to, according to Jesus Sequias, president of Datincorp political consultants in Caracas.
"Much depends on intangibles that can't be measured by the polls," said. "There is discontent among the chavistas that could provoke a vote for Falcon. Also, pressure from Falcon is forcing the CNE to act in a more neutral fashion."
The third candidate, Bertucci, a former pastor at the evangelical Maranatha megachurch in Caracas, has said he would distribute medicine and food in poor barrios while promising that "days of glory" are ahead if he wins.
But the election and its outcome were far from the mind of 50-year old nurse Maria Jose Salinas of Caracas, who is preparing to return to her native Ecuador. Her adopted country Venezuela bears little resemblance to the one she immigrated to in 1988.
"I found prosperity here, a husband and I was able to send my children to university," Salinas said. "Now it's ruined. There are no medicines, no personal security. I don't want to leave. I never thought I would return to Ecuador, but the economic situation here only gets worse."
����
(Mogollon and Kraul are special correspondents. Kraul reported from Bogota, Colombia.
