Nicolas Maduro has won Venezuela’s presidential election, according to partial results published by the country’s electoral council. However, the decision has been dismissed by the opposition, which has alleged widespread fraud in vote counting after opinion polls suggested a landslide win for Maduro’s prime opponent Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
The election was held on Sunday. The head of the National Electoral Council (CNE), Elvis Amoroso, said subsequently that, with 80% of the votes counted, President Maduro had 51.20% of the vote, compared to 44.02% for Urrutia, reported BBC.
The Venezuelan opposition has vowed to challenge the result. It had united behind Urrutia in an effort to unseat Maduro, who has been in power for 11 years. Maduro, 61, took office after the death of Hugo Chavez in 2013, and has since overseen an economic collapse that has seen Venezuela’s GDP shrink by an estimated 80% and over 7 million of the country’s 30-million citizens immigrate.
Venezuela has the world’s biggest oil reserves, but its “oil output has plummeted under President Maduro — the result of a combination of lack of investment, mismanagement and oil sanctions”, a BBC report noted.
“A lifting of the oil sanctions — imposed by the US in order to exert pressure on Mr Maduro following the 2018 presidential election — could have repercussions on the price of oil globally,” it added.
Addressing his supporters in Caracas, Maduro said his re-election was a “triumph of peace and stability”.
While praising the national election system, he described it as transparent. Maduro then mocked the opposition, saying that they “cry fraud” at every election.
Reaction To Election Results
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his scepticism after the results were announced. He said the United States had “serious concerns that the declared outcome does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people”, according to the BBC.
Meanwhile, Cuba, which is a close ally of the Maduro government, said the Venezuelan people had spoken their truth and “the Revolution won”.
