CARACAS – Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election Sunday (Monday Manila time) but the opposition and key regional neighbors immediately rejected the official results.
The opposition coalition itself claimed victory by a large margin, after an election campaign tainted by claims of political intimidation and fears of fraud, and following predictions by pollsters that Maduro would lose but was unlikely to concede after more than a decade in power.
He won re-election with 51.2 percent of votes, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent, according to the electoral council, which in its majority is loyal to the president.
Maduro, 61, addressed celebrating supporters at the presidential palace minutes after the announcement.
“I can say, before the people of Venezuela and the world, I am Nicolas Maduro Moros, the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Maduro said.
“There will be peace, stability and justice. Peace and respect for the law.”
But Venezuela’s opposition coalition insisted it had garnered 70 percent of the vote, rejecting the figures from Maduro’s loyalist electoral authority.
“We want to say to all of Venezuela and the world that Venezuela has a new president-elect and it is (candidate) Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia,” opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told journalists, adding: “We won.”
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves also denounced the official result as “fraudulent,” while Chile’s president described it as “hard to believe.”
Peru announced it had recalled its ambassador for consultation over the results.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “serious concerns” that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares on Monday called on Venezuela to ensure “total transparency.”
in the vote count after President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected in a controversial vote.
Maduro won 51.2 percent of votes, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent, according to official results. But the opposition coalition insists it got 70 percent of the vote.
Independent polls had predicted Sunday’s vote would bring an end to 25 years of “Chavismo,” the populist movement founded by Maduro’s socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.
Since 2013, Maduro has been at the helm of the once wealthy petro-state where GDP dropped by 80 percent in a decade, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.
He is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.
Gonzalez Urrutia had replaced popular Machado on the ticket after authorities loyal to Maduro excluded her from the race.
Machado, who campaigned far and wide for her proxy, had urged voters on Sunday to keep “vigil” at their polling stations in the “decisive hours” of counting amid widespread fears of fraud.
Maduro had previously warned of a “bloodbath” if he lost.
Rejecting opinion polls, the government relied on its own numbers to assert Maduro would defeat Gonzalez Urrutia, a little-known 74-year-old former diplomat.
Maduro counts on a loyal electoral apparatus, military leadership and state institutions in a system of well-established political patronage.
On Friday, a Venezuelan NGO said Caracas was holding 305 “political prisoners” and had arrested 135 people with links to the opposition campaign since January.
Gonzalez Urrutia had said the opposition was “prepared to defend” the vote and trusted “our armed forces to respect the decision of our people.”
He added there had been a “massive” voter turnout.
Ballots were cast on machines that print paper receipts placed into a container. The electronic votes go directly to a centralized CNE database.
The opposition had deployed about 90,000 volunteer election monitors to polling stations countrywide.
