Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected with 51.2% of the vote, the electoral commission said on Sunday, after a campaign marred by opposition intimidation and fears of fraud.
Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral body loyal to the government, told reporters that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who was leading in the polls, had won 44.2 percent of the vote.
Maduro, 61, was elected to a third six-year term at the helm of a once-wealthy oil nation that has seen its gross domestic product fall by 80 percent in a decade and forced more than 7 million of its 30 million people to emigrate.
In power since 2013, he has been accused of jailing critics and harassing the opposition during an increasingly authoritarian era.
Independent polls had suggested Sunday’s vote could bring to an end 25 years of “Chavismo,” the populist movement founded by Maduro’s predecessor, the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.
Gonzalez Urrutia ran in place of popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado after authorities loyal to Maduro barred her from the election.
Machado, who campaigned across the country on behalf of his surrogates, urged voters late Sunday to remain “vigilant” at polling stations during the “crucial hours” of vote counting amid growing concerns about voter fraud.
President Maduro relies on loyal electoral bodies, military leadership and state institutions, with a well-established system of political patronage.
Sunday’s election was the result of a mediation agreement reached last year between the government and the opposition.
The agreement allowed the United States to temporarily ease sanctions imposed after Maduro’s 2018 reelection, which was rejected by Western countries and dozens of Latin American nations as a sham.
But Maduro broke the terms of the agreement and sanctions were reinstated.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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