Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his political opponents have claimed victory in an election tainted by allegations of fraud and counting irregularities, CNN reported.
According to a statement from the National Electoral Commission (CNE), with 80% of the votes counted, Maduro had received more than 51% of the vote, beating Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the candidate from the Democratic Unity Platform (PUD), who received more than 44%.
U.S. and many world leaders have expressed concern about the official results handing the presidential election victory to an autocratic leader.
As the votes were being counted on Sunday evening, allegations of electoral fraud began to emerge. Opposition witnesses claimed they were denied access to CNE headquarters during the count, and the CNE allegedly stopped transmitting data from local polling stations to the central headquarters to prevent further vote processing.
According to CNN, the CNE has been criticized by some international organizations for lacking impartiality.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told a news conference that according to her records, her party’s candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, received 70% of the vote to Maduro’s 30%.
“We won, everyone knows it,” Machado said, adding that the opposition would “defend the truth.”
“The entire international community knows what happened in Venezuela and how people voted for change,” she said.
Gonzalez, who was also present at the press conference, alleged that rules were broken during the election.
The election was expected to be the biggest challenge to Maduro’s 11-year rule, and voters came out in droves, many of whom pointed to violent repression and economic collapse under his rule and said they would leave the country if he won.
After the results were announced, President Maduro called it a “victory for peace, stability, republican ideals and the cause of equality.”
“They could not survive sanctions. They could not survive aggression and threats. They cannot and will never be able to survive the dignity of the Venezuelan people,” the president said of his political opponents in his speech.
The results announced by electoral authorities stirred mixed emotions in the capital, Caracas, where Maduro’s supporters cheered and celebrated outside the presidential palace, while opposition supporters were seen crying and hugging each other in the streets.
If Maduro becomes president, it will be his third consecutive six-year term and a continuation of “Chavismo,” a left-wing populist ideology named after his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, CNN reported.
President Chavez ruled Venezuela for 14 years until his death in 2013. His policies were centered on nationalization and redistribution of the country’s vast oil wealth to the poorest and most marginalized, as well as a relentless effort to defend Venezuela’s sovereignty against “imperialist” powers.
But the oil-rich country has suffered its worst peacetime economic crisis in recent years, with Maduro blaming foreign sanctions against his government and describing Venezuela as the victim of an “economic war.”
Meanwhile, the opposition, which has energized this election cycle and posed the biggest threat to Maduro’s grip on power in years, has promised to restore democracy in Venezuela and rebuild the economy if it wins.
During his two terms in office, Maduro has already seen unprecedented levels of poverty and migration, with shortages of basic goods and soaring inflation forcing some eight million Venezuelans to flee the country.
Once the fifth-largest economy in Latin America, Venezuela’s has shrunk to the size of a mid-sized city, according to International Monetary Fund data, but President Maduro blames the economic collapse on sanctions imposed on his regime by the United States and other Western countries.
(This news report has been published from a syndicated feed. Except for the headline, the content has not been written or edited by OpIndia staff)
