The authoritarian leader of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was declared the winner of the country’s tumultuous presidential election on Monday morning (29), despite the significant momentum of an opposition movement that was convinced this would be the year it would oust Maduro from power.
With 80% of the polling stations counted, the country’s electoral authorities claimed that Maduro had received 51.2% of the votes, while the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, had received 44.2%.
Maduro’s government, suspected of fabricating electoral results before, was accused of irregularities again, with the vote count being immediately questioned by the opposition and several authorities in the country.
“We won and the whole world knows it,” said the country’s most popular opposition leader, María Corina Machado, to reporters in Caracas. She called the declared result “impossible,” given the information her team had gathered about voter turnout.
Authorities at some polling places refused to release printed copies verifying the electronic vote count.
In a televised speech, Maduro called his victory a “triumph of peace, stability” and “the idea of equality.” He denied allegations of electoral fraud.
He was reportedly reelected for a 6-year term.
During the 25 years that Maduro’s party has been in power, the country has experienced an economic contraction unlike any seen before, and Venezuela has become a source of one of the largest migration crises in the world.
Millions of Venezuelans supported the opposition candidate, González, a little-known former diplomat who became Maduro’s main rival after María Corina Machado was barred from running for office by Maduro’s government. Representatives from the United States, European Union, and Latin America expressed concern and called for transparency in the Venezuelan elections.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken stated that the U.S. government had “serious concerns that the announced result did not reflect the will or votes of the Venezuelan people.”
In Brazil, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated, through a note, that it awaits the publication by the National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela of “data disaggregated by polling station, an essential step for the transparency, credibility, and legitimacy of the election results.”
The statement says that Brazil “reaffirms the fundamental principle of popular sovereignty, to be observed through impartial verification of the results.”
Sources: The New York Times and Agência Brasil