“I am Nicolás Maduro Moros, re-elected President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. I will defend our democracy, our law, and our people.“This is what Maduro declared in his speech to his supporters in Caracas.
Maduro dedicated the victory to his predecessor Hugo Chavez, who died in 2013 and was also a hero of the authoritarian regime. “Long live Chavez. Chavez is alive!” the president-elect shouted.
The comments came at the end of a six-hour delay in announcing Sunday’s election results, which sparked a wave of concern among South American governments.
Finally, the National Electoral Council announced that. Maduro received 51.21 percent of the vote, compared to 44.2 percent for his rival.Former diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
Independent observers have previously described these elections as the most arbitrary in recent years.
According to the electoral authority, with about 80% of the votes counted, Maduro had received more than five million votes, compared to 4.4 million for González Urrutia.
The result was a severe blow to Venezuela’s opposition, which, though divided, had united behind Gonzalez’s candidacy, hoping to help pull the country out of one of the worst economic collapses in modern history.
“We won every state and everyone knows it.”Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who supported Gonzalez’s campaign after she was barred from running, confirmed the news.
“We not only defeated them politically and morally, we defeated them with votes,” Machado told reporters. Gonzalez won with 70 percent of the vote. He should be considered the elected president of the country.
“Hard to believe” results.
Allies of Nicolás Maduro quickly celebrated the election result, including Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, who welcomed the electoral result. “A historic victory” and a victory for the “dignity and courage of the Venezuelan people”.
Bolivian leftist leader Luis Arce also celebrated the election results, which came on Chavez’s 70th birthday. “What a wonderful way to remember Comandante Hugo Chavez,” he wrote on the social networking site X.
Beijing congratulated Venezuela “on the success of its presidential elections” and congratulated President Maduro. “China is willing to enrich the strategic partnership and make the people of the two countries benefit from it.”Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian announced.
However, negative reactions were more pronounced than positive ones, with many countries considering the elections to be fraudulent.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US government has “serious concerns that the announced outcome does not reflect the will or voice of the Venezuelan people.”
“It is essential that all votes are counted in a fair and transparent manner.Election officials should immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers, and electoral authorities should publish detailed vote counts. The international community is closely monitoring this situation and will respond accordingly.“, he added.
EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell called for “full transparency of the electoral process” in Venezuela.
“Venezuelans voted peacefully and in large numbers on the future of the country. Their will must be respected. It is essential to ensure full transparency of the electoral process, including detailed counting and access to votes.” [aos documentos] “Polling stations,” Borrell said in a message posted on social media. Leopoldo Lopez, the Venezuelan opposition figure exiled in Spain, has declared that there was “unsustainable fraud” in Venezuela’s presidential election.
“The key is to publish one spreadsheet after another so that it can be verified.”He defended this, adding that Madrid does not have a preferred candidate and that he “only wants the prosperity and democracy of the Venezuelan people to prevail.”
Chilean President Gabriel Boric warned that “the Maduro regime must understand that the results it has published are difficult to believe,” and that “Chile will not recognize any unverified result.”
The Peruvian government also rejected the result. “Peru will not accept the violation of the popular will of the Venezuelan people,” the country’s foreign minister, Javier González-Oleccia, wrote in the tenth letter.
In Costa Rica, the executive authority said it categorically rejected what it considered “fraudulent result”While Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou said the vote counting process was “flawed by obvious flaws.”
With agencies
