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The Venezuela’s Electoral Council announced on Monday that President Nicolas Maduro won re-election with 51.2 per cent of votes cast on Sunday.
The President of the CNE electoral body, Elvis Amoroso, in its majority loyal to the government, told reporters 44.2 per cent of votes had gone to opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia.
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.
Maduro, 61, who addressed supporters minutes after the announcement, expressed confidence that the nation would experience peace and stability.
He said, “There will be peace, stability and justice.”
As his supporters celebrated, downcast opposition voters waited to hear from Gonzalez Urrutia and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately expressed “serious concerns” that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.
Since 2013, Maduro has been at the helm of the once-wealthy petro-state where GDP dropped by 80 per cent 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.
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.
Recall that Venezuelan NGO said Caracas was holding 305 “political prisoners” and had arrested 135 people with links to the opposition campaign since January.
