This is the third term at the head of Venezuela for this heir to Hugo Chavez.
Outgoing President Nicolas Maduro, heir to Hugo Chavez, has been re-elected as Venezuela’s leader with 51.2% of the vote, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced on Monday, July 29. Nicolas Maduro received 5.15 million votes, ahead of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who received just under 4.5 million (44.2%), according to official figures announced by CNE President Elvis Amoroso, after 80% of the ballots had been counted and a turnout of 59%.
The result is “irreversible”he said at the end of a campaign in which the opposition denounced intimidation and possible fraud. Nicolas Maduro must thus begin his third six-year term at the head of this oil country plunged into an unprecedented economic crisis, which has forced seven of the 30 million Venezuelans to emigrate. For its part, the Venezuelan opposition claimed victory, ensuring that its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia had won 70% of the votes and refusing to recognize the results proclaimed by the CNE.
After the announcement of these results, the United States expressed its doubts through the voice of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “We have serious concerns that the announced result does not reflect the will or vote of the Venezuelan people.”he said at a news conference in Japan.
During the day, even before the count, Nicolas Maduro’s camp suggested that it had won the elections. As did his opponent’s camp. The opposition leader, Maria Corina Machado, declared ineligible and replaced at short notice by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who was previously unknown to the general public, called on her compatriots to “stay in the polling stations” to monitor the counting. “We ask all Venezuelans to be there to watch. We have fought all these years for this day, these are the crucial minutes”she said.
Caracas has limited observation of the vote. The invitation to observers from the European Union was withdrawn in May and many international observers have been blocked or refused at the last minute, including four former Latin American presidents on Friday. Also, during the campaign, Nicolas Maduro raised the possibility of “bloodbath in a fratricidal civil war provoked by the fascists”.
The oil country, long one of the richest in Latin America, is embroiled in an unprecedented economic and social crisis. The government accuses the “criminal blockade” of being the root of all evil. The United States had tightened its sanctions in an attempt to oust Nicolas Maduro after his contested re-election in 2018, in a vote marred by fraud according to the opposition, and which led to demonstrations that were severely repressed.
