Caracas. In the presidential election held in Venezuela on Sunday, both Nicolas Maduro and the main opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez are claiming their victory. Although Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner, opposition leaders are preparing to protest the results. After midnight, the National Election Council said that Maduro got 51 percent of the votes, while the main opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez got 44 percent of the votes.
The election authority, controlled by Maduro loyalists, has yet to release official turnout figures from 30,000 polling stations, preventing the opposition from verifying the results. Foreign leaders have yet to recognize the results as the electoral council has promised to release official figures in the “coming hours.”
Chilean leftist leader Gabriel Boric said, “The Maduro government must understand that the results it has published are hard to trust.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tokyo that his country had “serious concerns that the results announced do not reflect the will or votes of the Venezuelan people.”
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 they have tried to disturb the peace of this country,” he told some hundreds of supporters gathered at the presidential residence. He offered no evidence to support his victory, but promised to punish those who tried to incite violence in Venezuela.
Opposition representatives said that the data they had collected at the polling stations showed that Gonzalez was defeating Maduro. Meanwhile, the head of the Election Council said that he would release the official voting figures in the next few hours. President Nicolas Maduro faced a strong challenge from Gonzalez for his third term. Opposition leaders were confident of Gonzalez’s victory and had already started celebrating outside some polling stations.
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 29, 2024, 22:24 IST