Venezuelans vote to elect new president

People in Venezuela have headed to the polls in the first presidential election held following the death of President Hugo Chavez.

Venezuelan voters began casting their votes at 06:30 a.m. local time (1100 GMT) on Sunday. The polls will close after 10 hours unless there is need for extending voting hours due to high turnout.

The two main candidates are acting President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

Opinion polls have given Maduro leads ranging between 10 and 20 points. However, the last survey carried out by the Caracas-based Datanalisis polling firm gave him a narrower 9.7-point edge last week.

Nearly 19 million people are eligible to take part in Venezuela’s presidential polls. Over 3,000 national observers and 240 international observers are monitoring the election.

Maduro on Saturday called on the Venezuelan nation to participate in the election, saying, “We believe we will break the record of turnout.”

He said he would respect the vote result and urged the opposition to avoid falling for the provocations of foreign countries trying to create unrest in the country.

Maduro, 50, has promised to continue the late Venezuelan leader’s policies which helped to slash poverty from 50 to 29 percent.

Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor, blames the government for the nation’s economic woes. He lost the presidential election to Chavez by a nearly 11-point margin in October 2012.

Several plots to sabotage the elections have been foiled so far. In the latest incident on Friday, Venezuelan Vice President Jorge Arreaza announced that security forces had arrested two Colombian paramilitaries who planned to destabilize the election.

Maduro became Venezuela’s acting president on March 8, following the death of Hugo Chavez, who lost a two-year battle with cancer on March 5.