Venezuela opposition parties to boycott ballot

Bloomberg

Venezuela’s main opposition parties say they will shun this year’s presidential elections, claiming the vote has been rigged to guarantee a victory for President Nicolas Maduro.
Justice First, the country’s largest opposition party, announced that it would not be participating in April 22 elections. “We won’t help out a dictatorship that only cares about maintaining power on the backs of the Venezuelan people and their suffering,” the party said in a statement.
While several members in the broad-coalition of parties that form the Democratic Unity Roundtable, known as MUD in Spanish, are still deliberating on whether to skip April’s elections. A senior member of the New Era Party announced on Twitter that his organization would sit out the election, while the Popular Will party, led by jailed-activist Leopoldo Lopez, said last week that it would not “nominate or endorse any candidate.”
Maduro, 55, who became president after the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, is seeking another six-year term to further a so-called socialist revolution that has given way to the worst economic crisis the country’s history. Opposition leaders say they can’t overcome an electoral authority stacked with Maduro loyalists that ignores state abuses and banned its top candidates from the ballot.
For months the opposition has tried to negotiate more favorable terms with the government through a series of meetings in the Dominican Republic, as part of an international effort to remedy the country’s political stalemate. The MUD demanded the government set a date that provided ample time to appoint new electoral authorities and invite international observers, but as talks broke down the ruling socialists did exactly the opposite: Election Day was accelerated under current conditions.
While Venezuelans largely blame the ruling socialist’s stewardship of the economy for quadruple-digit inflation and chronic food shortages, Maduro’s top rivals are currently barred from holding office.