MARGARITA Fuenmayor offered her house as a voting centre in primary elections called by the opposition in Venezuela yesterday.

It was a last-minute decision in defiance of the “intimidations” of pro-government activists in the working class neighbourhood where she lives.

Neighbours accompanied elderly people – and even hoisted disabled people – up the narrow stairs leading to Fuenmayor’s home, in Los Magallanes de Catia, a bastion of the ruling leftist party in Caracas. 

“We have this space because she is the only person who dared. The two (owners of the) previous spaces were intimidated and had some fear, but she took the risk and here we are,” Ricardo Rada, a political leader in the area, told AFP.

“Yes, we can; yes, we can”, chanted some 1,000 people outside Fuenmayor’s house to encourage a process marked by logistical setbacks, such as delays in the delivery of voting material.

The primary, designed to select a rival to President Nicolas Maduro in 2024 elections, was organised by the opposition itself after rejecting assistance from the National Electoral Council following months of evasion on the part of authorities. The council proposed at the last minute to postpone the primary for a month in order to organise it.

“I don’t know if they can intimidate me later on, but I want a change, for my children, for my country,” said Fuenmayor, who battles cervical cancer and depends on remittances from relatives abroad to pay for treatment.

A few blocks from her home, pro-government activists blasted music and prowled the area along with members of “colectivos” – shock groups sympathetic to the government – to intimidate the press and voters.

‘Die happy’

In another point of Catia, one of the largest neighbourhoods of Caracas with some 400,000 inhabitants, Judith Gonzalez also turned her house into a voting centre, in the hope of achieving a unitary candidacy, a challenge in the face of the enormous fissures of the opposition.

“If the National Electoral Council did not give us, the Venezuelans, a hand to lend us the polling stations, which is ideal, I considered well, my house is on order, and ready,” said Gonzalez, 75.

“Today is a great opportunity and I don’t want to miss it,” said one voter, Marbelis Rengel, a 47-year-old hairdresser.

Despite the logistical difficulties, Fuenmayor said she was happy to see her house full of voters.

“If I am going to die of cancer or if I am going to die because they come to shoot my house to intimidate me, I am going to die happy because I know I did something for humanity and for the population,” she said. – AFP, October 23, 2023.