Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has won a third term with 51% of the vote, the country's electoral authority said just after midnight on Monday, despite multiple exit polls which pointed to an opposition win. The authority said opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won 44% of the vote, though the opposition had earlier said it had "reasons to celebrate" and asked supporters to continue monitoring vote counts. Maduro, appearing at the presidential palace before cheering supporters, said his reelection is a triumph of peace and stability and reiterated his campaign trail assertion that Venezuela's electoral system is transparent.
A poll from Edison Research, known for its polling of US elections, had predicted in an exit poll that Gonzalez would win 65% of the vote, while Maduro would win 31%. Local firm Meganalisis predicted a 65% vote for Gonzalez and just under 14% for Maduro. About 80% of ballot boxes have been counted, said National Electoral Council (CNE) president Elvis Amoroso in a televised statement, adding results had been delayed because of an "aggression" against the electoral data transmission system.
Opposition parties claim their victory in the Venezuela elections
The CNE has asked the attorney general to investigate the "terrorist actions" Amoroso said, adding participation was 59%. The opposition had earlier said voters had chosen a change after 25 years of socialist party rule.
"The results cannot be hidden. The country has peacefully chosen a change," Gonzalez said in a post on X at around 11 pm local time, before the results were announced. "Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado reiterated a call for the country's military to uphold the results of the vote.
"A message for the military. The people of Venezuela have spoken: they don't want Maduro," she said earlier on X. "It is time to put yourselves on the right side of history. You have a chance and it's now." Venezuela's military has always supported Maduro, a 61-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister, and there have been no public signs that leaders of the armed forces are breaking from the government.
Voters started lining up at some voting centres across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours. The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signalling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad should Maduro win another six-year term.
Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.
How did Gonzalez project himself as a staunch opposition leader?
The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party. Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition's October primary with over 90 per cent of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That's when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Sunday's ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only Gonzalez threatened Maduro's rule. After voting, Maduro said he would recognise the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same. “No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognise and will recognise the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognised.”
Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000 per cent led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.
Venezuela economic sanctions
Economic sanctions from the US seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the US and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis. Maduro's pitch to voters this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4 per cent this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71 per cent from 2012 to 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under USD 200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed a family of four for a month — costs an estimated USD 385. The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country's currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.
Gonzalez and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela's vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn't materialise. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
(With inputs from agencies)
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