Voting Gets Underway for Venezuela’s Presidential Elections
Venezuela’s 2012 presidential elections got underway this morning, with many citizens queuing from 3 am in the early hours of the morning outside polling stations to cast their vote.
Caracas, October 7th 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – Venezuela’s 2012 presidential elections got underway this morning, with many citizens queuing from 3 am in the early hours of the morning outside polling stations to cast their vote.
Numerous supporters of the government began the day’s activities with the “toque de Diana;” a trumpet call at around 3.30 am reminding people to go and vote. Many of the country’s Chavistas, including many community media outlets, have been up all night in preparation for the day ahead.
So far election day has progressed without incident, although yesterday there were reports that an unknown man had attacked a pro-Chavez media channel in Coro, Falcón, with a grenade at around 7pm. One person was injured.
Speaking from Caricuao in Caracas, Manuel Graft, a member of the Venezuela solidarity brigade from Germany, stated that there is currently an atmosphere of calm at polling centres.
“In Caricuao everything is very tranquil. I visited several voting centres this morning; outside all of them are really long queues. Many people arrived from 3 am onwards,” he commented to Venezuelanalysis.com.
This morning the president of the country’s National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, confirmed that operations for the day were running smoothly and that the current “outlook is extremely positive”.
Last night, Lucena confirmed that the results of the elections would be announced when all queuing voters had exercised their democratic right and when enough of the votes had been counted to identify an “irreversible tendency”.
To the left is a selection of photos of the day early this morning, and see here for photos of voting today.
