Maduro declared winner of Venezuela presidential election – NBC 6 South Florida

Venezuela’s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a confrontation with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.

“Venezuelans and the whole world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first speech.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said González’s margin of victory was “overwhelming”, based on voting results she received from campaign representatives at about 40% of polling stations across the country.

The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, said earlier that Maduro had secured 51% of the vote, compared to 44% for González. But it did not release the counts from each of the 30,000 polling stations across the country, promising not to do so until the “coming hours,” hampering the ability to verify the results.

Foreign leaders refused to recognize the results.

“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, Chile’s leftist leader. “We will not recognize any result that is not verifiable.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tokyo that the US has “serious concerns that the announced results do not reflect the will or voices of the Venezuelan people”.

The delay in announcing the results, six hours after polls were due to close, signaled a deep debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents emerged early in the evening claiming all but certain victory.

When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unknown foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.

“This is not the first time that they have tried to disturb the peace of the republic,” he told several hundred supporters at the presidential palace. He offered no evidence to support the claim, but promised “justice” for those who seek to foment violence in Venezuela.

Opposition officials said that tallies they gathered from campaign representatives at polling stations showed González beating Maduro. Meanwhile, the head of the electoral council said it would release the official voting figures in the coming hours.

Maduro celebrated the outcome with a few hundred supporters in the presidential palace. He ca

Maduro, seeking a third term, faced his biggest challenge yet: González, a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters until he was appointed at the last minute in April as a replacement for opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

Earlier, opposition leaders celebrated González’s landslide victory online and at some polling stations.

“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as an opposition campaign representative left a polling station in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubling Maduro’s vote. Dozens of people standing nearby broke into an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”

Voters lined up at polling stations across the country on Sunday morning, sharing water, coffee and snacks for hours.

The election will have ramifications across the United States. Both opponents and supporters of the administration have indicated they would join the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for foreign countries if Maduro wins another six-year term.

Authorities have scheduled Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist agitator 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 driving down wages, fueling hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families through migration.

The opposition managed to unite behind one candidate after years of internal divisions and election boycotts that derailed their ambitions to overthrow the ruling party.

Machado was blocked from running for office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court. A former lawmaker, she won the opposition primary in October with more than 90% of the vote. After being blocked from running for president, she chose a university lecturer as her replacement on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also banned her from registering. Then González, a political newcomer, was elected.

Sunday’s vote also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González poses a threat to Maduro’s position in power.

After the vote, Maduro said he would recognize the election results and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.

“Nobody is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will recognize the election referee, the official announcements and I will make sure that they are recognized.”

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and once had Latin America’s most advanced economy. But the country went into free fall after Maduro took over. Falling oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared to over 130,000 percent led first to social unrest and then to mass emigration.

US economic sanctions to oust Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election – which was condemned as illegitimate by the US and dozens of other countries – have only worsened the crisis.

Maduro’s pitch to voters this election has been one of economic security, which he has tried to sell with tales of entrepreneurship and references to a stable exchange rate and lower inflation. The International Monetary Fund predicts the economy will grow 4% this year — among the fastest in Latin America — after contracting 71% from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have seen no improvement in their quality of life. Many earn less than $200 a month, meaning families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second or third jobs. A basket of basic supplies—enough to feed a family of four for a month—costs an estimated $385.

The opposition is trying to exploit the huge inequality created by the crisis, which has seen Venezuelans exchange their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.

González and Machado focused much of their campaign on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, which has not seen the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years. They promised a government that would create enough jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

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Associated Press editor Fabiola Sánchez contributed to this report.