Thousands of Venezuelans go to the polls in Peru to elect the leader of the opposition

Lima, Oct 22 (EFE).- Thousands of Venezuelans voted this Sunday in various parts of Peru to elect the opposition candidate for the 2024 presidential elections, a call to which citizens did not stop attending from early in the morning and throughout the day to exercise their right.

"You can see the large volume of people from early on, from 6 in the morning there are many adults, as if we were in Venezuela, exercising the great right that we Venezuelans have to vote, which is the greatest weapon we have," he told EFE the coordinator of the voting center installed in Lima Norte, Oré Nieves.

In this center, there were 8,390 registered voters, since the north of the Peruvian capital is where the most Venezuelans reside, but the largest voting point is in Lima Center, where there are about 12,000 people registered.

"In terms of logistics, we have worked hard to give the voter the greatest possibility of having information, there are many people who did not receive the mail and we are making it easier for them to enter the center," Nieves explained, indicating that the Polling station members verify if the person is registered on the lists, and then they let them in to vote.

He added that the tables opened at 8:00 a.m. local time (1:00 p.m. GMT) and will receive voters until 4:00 p.m. local time (9:00 p.m. GMT), as long as there are no people in line.

According to the Center for Strategic Studies of the Peruvian Army, around 1.3 million Venezuelans live in the Andean country and Lima is the city where the most people of this nationality reside outside their country.

One of them is David Balbuena, originally from the Venezuelan state of Trujillo who has been in Peru for five years.

"I come here to exercise my right to vote like all the Venezuelans who are making an appearance (...) I feel honored and happy to see all the Venezuelan people taking to the streets at different points to exercise their right. We have the obligation to be able to express our freedom and be able to generate changes for our country," he said happily at the doors of the voting center.

Four voting points were enabled in Lima, in the north, south, center and east of the city, and Venezuelan citizens were also able to exercise their right in the southern city of Arequipa and in Trujillo, in the north.

Thirteen candidates registered for this primary election, of which Henrique Capriles and Roberto Enríquez withdrew without making any alliance, while Freddy Superlano withdrew from the election and expressed his support for María Corina Machado, who led the opinion polls during the bell.

For these elections, the closed voter census amounts to just over 20 million people, inside and outside Venezuela, where voting centers have been set up in 28 countries.