21st May, 2018
Nicolas Maduro, who was re-elected as the Venezuelan president, called on other presidential candidates to engage in dialogue.
Venezuela held the presidential election on Sunday.
Four candidates ran this year: Maduro, Reinaldo Quijada, who supported Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez but is dissatisfied with the current government, opposition leader Henri Falcon and Evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci.
According to the head of the National Electoral Council Tibisay Lucena, Maduro won the election having obtained 5,823,718 votes or 68 per cent.
The turnout amounted to 46.01 per cent.
“I invite the candidates, who took part in the election, and their political teams to engage in the reconciliation process and national dialogue,” Maduro said at a meeting with his supporters near the Miraflores Palace in Caracas.
The re-elected leader said that foreign states had to give up their attempts to destabilize the situation in Venezuela.
“Stop attacks and threats to destabilise [the situation in] Venezuela! To destabilise [the situation in] Venezuela is a crime!” Maduro said.
The Venezuelan presidential election was not recognised by a number of states, including the U.S., Argentina and Chile. Opposition candidate Falcon also refused to recognize the results of the voting due to alleged mass electoral violations.
Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector.
Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his closest challenger Falcon, a former governor who broke with an opposition boycott to stand.
“They underestimated me,” Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd.
The opposition said that figure was inflated, putting participation at nearer 30 per cent.
An electoral board source told Reuters 32.3 per cent of eligible voters cast ballots by 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) as most polls shut.
“The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognize it,” said Falcon, a 56-year-old former state governor, looking downcast.
Maduro had welcomed Falcon’s candidacy, which gave some legitimacy to a process critics at home and around the world had condemned in advance as the “coronation” of a dictator.
Falcon’s quick rejection of Sunday’s election, and call for a new vote, was therefore a blow to the government’s strategy.
Falcon, a former member of the Socialist Party who went over to the opposition in 2010, said he was outraged at the government’s placing of nearly 13,000 pro-government stands called “red spots” close to polling stations nationwide.
Bertucci, followed Falcon in slamming irregularities during Sunday’s vote and calling for a new election.
In spite of his unpopularity over a national economic meltdown, Maduro benefited on Sunday not just from the opposition boycott but also from a ban on his two most popular rivals and the liberal use of state resources in his campaign.
His tally, however, fell short of the 10 million votes he had said throughout the campaign he wanted to win.