The government-run electoral authority in Venezuela announced that Nicolás Maduro won the presidential election.
This seemed to dash the opposition’s dreams of ending his authoritarian and socialist rule.
Rivals and several governments in the area and beyond quickly contested it.
The international community was worried when the results of Sunday’s election weren’t made public for six hours.
However, Venezuela’s electoral council said Maduro had won with 51.21% of the votes, while Edmundo González Urrutia, his rival, got 44.2%.
The council said that with about 80% of the votes counted, Maduro had more than 5 million votes, while González had only 4.4 million.
According to outside observers, the election was the most random in recent years, even by the standards of an authoritarian government that began with Hugo Chávez, Maduro’s mentor and predecessor.
The resistance, on the other hand, gave a very different picture of what happened.
At a news gathering, the opposition leader, María Corina Machado, said that their own records showed that their candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, had gotten 70% of the vote, while Maduro had only gotten 30%.
Machado said, “We won, and everyone knows it.” He also said that the other side would “defend the truth.”
She said, “Everyone knows what happened in Venezuela and how people voted for change.”
President Maduro is serving his third straight six-year term. This continues the “Chavismo” rule that began in 1999 with former president Hugo Chávez. Since Chávez died in 2013, Maduro has been in charge.
The vote came at a significant time for Venezuela, which is rich in oil and recently went through the worst economic crash for a peaceful country.
Maduro has said that Venezuela is the target of an “economic war” because of the sanctions that other countries have put on his government.
Meanwhile, the opposition, which has become more united this election cycle and is now Maduro’s biggest threat in years, said they would rebuild the economy and return to democracy in Venezuela if they won.
As the election went on, worries grew that the opposition would not have a fair fight because Maduro’s government controls all of Venezuela’s public institutions, including the Supreme Court, which could decide if there was voting fraud in the end.
People have also said that the government rigged votes, which it rejected.
Tears and happiness
After the election, Maduro called it a “triumph of peace, stability, Republican ideals, and the ideas of equality.”
He talked about his political opponents in a public speech. “They could not overcome the sanctions, they could not overcome the aggressions, they could not overcome the threats, they could not and will never be able to overcome the dignity of the people of Venezuela,” he said.
When the election results were made public in Caracas, the capital, people had a range of reactions.
People who supported Maduro cheered and celebrated outside the president’s official home.
At the same time, people supporting the resistance were seen crying and hugging in the streets.
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