Venezuelans voting in Belgium
How did Venezuelans vote abroad? This time abstention was very high. There are several reasons for such low participation. The main issue was that this time we could only vote for the Latin American Parliament, an organisation most Venezuelans did not know existed. There were other reasons: simple lack of interest, the distance to the closest embassy or consulate and the difficulties Venezuelans have in registering to vote abroad.
In Europe, most Venezuelans still supporting the Chávez regime work at embassies or consulates. Above you see the latest results for Belgium. 60 Venezuelan nationals -of 190- voted. There are not many Venezuelans living in Belgium, so the embassy employees make up a bigger chunk of the pie. The general pattern would be less pro-Chávez for countries such as Spain and Britain, where there are several thousands. There are over 53000 Venezuelan expats registered to vote abroad. There are several times the amount of Venezuelans who could vote if they registered.
The Chávez government will probably do anything it can to prevent the CNE from publishing results of voters abroad. It very likely does not want more Venezuelan expats to take part in the 2012 elections. We, on our part, need to promote Venezuelan expats to go massively to vote in 2012.
If you have data from votes in other European countries, send me an email (desarrollo.sostenible.venezuela at gmail)
Finally, I want to show you our Chavez-o-Metre, which indicates when my readers think Chávez will cease to be president of Venezuela. I discontinued the poll for some months out of forgetfulness. It would be nice if some serious organisation in Venezuela kept this kind of polls in the same way as you see them in the German media. Anyway, what we see in the poll is that people start to have extreme ideas: more think Chávez will be out in 2013 and more think he will still be in power after 2021. Of course, this poll is not representative of the mood in Venezuela, but of my readers. Anyway: thanks for taking part.
