Caracas: President Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of the Venezuelan presidential election, securing a third six-year term with 51.2 percent of the vote, according to Elvis Amoroso, president of the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who led in opinion polls, received 44.2 percent of the vote. However, the announcement of the result has been widely opposed.
Opposition representatives reported discrepancies between the tallies that they had collected from polling stations and the figures released by the CNE, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists. They alleged that their data reveals Gonzalez leading significantly over Maduro.
In response to the results, Maduro, described his re-election as a triumph for peace and stability, asserting that the voting process was transparent. Maduro first came to power in 2013 following the death of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Maduro’s tenure has been marked by allegations of suppressing dissent and failing to address Venezuela’s prolonged economic crisis, which has driven more than seven million Venezuelans to migrate.
The opposition, which had campaigned on promises to resolve the economic crisis, was confident of a strong performance. Gonzalez, who replaced popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado was backed by Machado, who urged supporters to remain vigilant during the counting process to prevent fraud means. Machado claimed that Gonzalez had won 70 percent of the vote, a figure she argued closely aligned with recent opinion polls.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed concerns about the election results stating that, “We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.” Blinken advocates for a fair and transparent counting process in Venezuela.
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