Venezuela elects president

Venezuelans cast their vote

With relatively normality, about 19 million Venezuelans attend to the polls today to choose between the deputy president Nicolas Maduro and the opposition leader Henrique Capriles, as successor to Hugo Chavez, who died after being reelected in October.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) installed on Friday more than 39,000 polling stations in the 13,638 polling stations across the country, on a day with little “contingencies” developed along with the support of troops, said the president of the organization, Tibisay Lucena.

As the favorite in the polls, Maduro, 50 and former Foreign Minister, seeks to continue the ‘Bolivarian revolution‘ of Chavez, who chose him as his heir months before he died of cancer on March 5.

Meanwhile, Capriles, 40, lawyer and governor of Miranda state (north), makes his second bid for the presidency as the candidate of the opposition, giving Venezuelans a chance to move beyond the polarized Chavez era that was in power for 14 years with a model inspired by the Brazilian.

The voting will be electronic and nationwide is estimated that each voter take about a minute in exercising their right, so that the CNE plans to issue a first newsletter to 02:30 GMT, provided that “the results are irreversible” said Lucena.