Venezuelan activist shot dead in protest against controversial elections

Opposition parties are boycotting what they call a rigged election

Soldiers stand guard as people wait in line in front of a mural of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez before casting their votes at a polling station during the Constituent Assembly election in Caracas, Venezuela (REUTERS/Andres Martinez Casares)

A Venezuelan opposition activist has been shot dead in protest against controversial elections.

Ricardo Campos, who worked as a youth secretary with the opposition Accion Democratica party, was killed during the protest, the head of the national assembly said, according to the BBC.

Last night, Jose Felix Pineda, one of the candidates running in the election, was shot and killed in his home.

The country's president, Nicolas Maduro, widely disliked for overseeing an economic collapse during his four years in office, has promised the constitutional assembly will restore peace after months of opposition protests during which more than 115 people have been killed.

Opposition parties are boycotting what they call a rigged election while their sympathizers plan demonstrations across the country during the day.

Critics say the assembly will allow Mr Maduro to dissolve the opposition-run Congress, delay future elections and rewrite electoral rules to prevent the socialists from being voted out of power in the once-prosperous South American nation.

Polls suggest a large majority of Venezuelans oppose the assembly.

The opposition says that more than seven million voters - from a population of around 32 million - overwhelmingly rejected the proposal in an unofficial referendum it organised this month.

Voters will not have the choice of whether to proceed with the assembly, only to select its 545 members from more than 6,100 candidates representing a broad array of Socialist Party allies.

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