Some in the opposition say the only way to protest is to abstain. Others say doing so will let the government “say they won without resistance.”
A year after he falsified the results of a presidential election, according to independent observers, Venezuela’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, is calling on voters on Sunday to once again head to the ballot box.
In the last vote, Mr. Maduro claimed victory despite a count that showed he had lost by a decisive margin. He then released a reign of terror on protesters, hundreds of whom are still locked up. This time, the election is for members of the legislature, known as the National Assembly, and for governors in the country’s 23 states.
No independent monitors will be present, and inside Venezuela many have said they believe that the results will once again be manufactured. Mr. Maduro is holding the election, analysts say, to project a veneer, however thin, of democracy.
“It serves only to give new life to the status quo,” said Benigno Alarcón, the director of the Center for Political and Government Studies at the Andrés Bello Catholic University in Caracas.
And yet there are opposition candidates participating.
The vote has reopened a rift among opposition activists, who had mostly united last year around the candidacy of Edmundo González, a former ambassador who won more than 60 percent of the presidential vote, according to a ballot count reviewed by the Carter Center, an independent monitoring group.
