Caracas, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition claims victory Presidential election on SundayThat would set up a showdown with President Nicolas Maduro’s government, which he had declared victorious.
“The Venezuelan people and the whole world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez said in his opening speech.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said Gonzalez’s margin of victory was “overwhelming,” based on vote tallies received from campaign representatives from around 40 percent of ballot boxes across the country.
Matthias Delacroix/AP
The National Electoral Commission, controlled by Maduro’s allies, had earlier said that Maduro had won 51 percent of the vote to Gonzalez’s 44 percent, but it did not release the results from the 30,000 polling stations across the country, promising only that they would be released “in the coming hours,” making the results difficult to verify.
Other countries have questioned the official results
Speaking in Tokyo, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had “serious concerns that the announced results do not reflect the will and vote of the Venezuelan people.”
Foreign leaders refrained from recognizing the results.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has announced are hard to believe,” said Gabriel Borik, a Chilean left-wing leader. “We will not accept any results that cannot be verified.”
“We view the election results announced by the electoral commission with many doubts,” Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said, according to Reuters.
“It was an open secret. They were going to ‘win’ regardless of the actual outcome,” Reuters quoted Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou as saying.
Italy and Spain are also among the countries that have expressed concerns about the veracity of the official results released.
However, China congratulated Maduro on his victory, and Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said he had spoken to Maduro and congratulated him on the “historic” win, according to AFP.
The delay in announcing the results – six hours after polls were scheduled to close – suggested there had been intense debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents declared victory earlier in the evening.
President Maduro finally emerged to celebrate the election results and accused unidentified foreign adversaries of trying to hack the voting system.
“This is not the first time they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he told hundreds of supporters at the presidential palace. He gave no evidence to back up his claims but promised “justice” to anyone who tries to foment violence in Venezuela.
Fernando Vergara/AP
President Maduro faces his toughest challenge yet in his bid for a third term. Gonzalez is the most unexpected opponentA former diplomat who was unknown to voters until he was named as Machado’s last-minute replacement in April, he was seen as a strongman.
Earlier, opposition supporters celebrated online and outside some polling stations, confident of Gonzalez’s landslide victory.
“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernandez, 31, a bank employee, as opposition representatives emerged from a polling station in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce that Gonzalez had received more than twice as many votes as Maduro. Dozens of people nearby broke into an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, fighting back tears. “We are all tired of this bondage.”
Voters began lining up before dawn on Sunday at several polling stations across the country, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
The results will have far-reaching effects
The election will have ripple effects across the Americas, with both government opponents and supporters expecting Maduro to win another six-year term and signaling their intention to join the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left the country in search of opportunity abroad.
Authorities scheduled Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the respected leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013 and entrusted Maduro with the mantle of the Bolivarian Revolution. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for driving down wages, promoting hunger, sapping the oil industry and separating families through migration.
The opposition has managed to consolidate its support for one candidate after years of internal divisions and election boycotts that thwarted its ambitions of toppling the ruling party.
Machado had been barred from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court. The former lawmaker won an opposition primary in October with a landslide victory, winning more than 90% of the vote. After being blocked from taking part in the presidential race, he chose a university professor as his replacement, but the National Electoral Commission also barred him from registering. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
There were eight candidates challenging Maduro in Sunday’s vote, but Gonzalez was the only one who posed a threat to Maduro’s power.
After the vote, President Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to do the same.
“No one will create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will continue to recognize the electoral jury and the official announcements, and I will ensure that they are recognized.”
The economy is at the center of turmoil, and so is the election
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy, but it has plummeted since Maduro came to power. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation of more than 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass migration.
U.S. sanctions aimed at forcing Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which the United States and dozens of other countries have condemned as illegitimate, have deepened the crisis.
Maduro has touted economic stability as his biggest selling point to voters in the election, citing entrepreneurship, a stable currency and low inflation. The International Monetary Fund projects the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, to grow 4% this year, the fastest in Latin America.
But most Venezuelans have not seen an improvement in their quality of life. Many earn less than $200 a month, and families struggle to afford basic goods; some are working second or third jobs. A basket of basic foods, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs an estimated $385.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns on Venezuela’s vast interior, which has not seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years, and promised a government that would create enough jobs to allow Venezuelans abroad to return and reunite with their families.
