Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election.
Maduro, who warned citizens there would be a ‘bloodbath’ were he to lose, secured re-election for the third time with 51.2 percent of votes, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent, the electoral council announced.
The 61-year-old addressed supporters at the presidential palace minutes after the announcement, declaring: ‘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.
‘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.
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, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed ‘serious concerns’ that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.
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 was running against opposition candidate and former diplomat Urrutia, who replaced popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on the ticket after authorities loyal to Maduro excluded her from the race.
Machado, 56 – 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.
Urrutia, 74, 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.
‘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,’ Machado told journalists after the result was returned.
‘We won,’ she said flatly.
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