Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro reacts following the presidential election results in Caracas on July 29, 2024.
Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election on Sunday, but the opposition and key regional neighbors have swiftly rejected the official results.
Maduro secured re-election with 51.2 percent of the vote, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent, according to the electoral council.
Maduro, 61, addressed supporters at the presidential palace minutes after the announcement to celebrate the declaration from his loyalist electoral authority.
“I can say, before the people of Venezuela and the world, I am Nicolas Maduro Moros, the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Maduro said. “There will be peace, stability, and justice. Peace and respect for the law.”
However, Venezuela’s opposition coalition insisted it had garnered 70 percent of the vote, rejecting the figures from Maduro’s loyalist electoral authority.
“We want to say to all of Venezuela and the world that Venezuela has a new president-elect, and it is (candidate) Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia,” opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told journalists, adding: “We won.”
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves denounced the official result as “fraudulent,” while Chile’s president described it as “hard to believe.” Peru announced it had recalled its ambassador for consultation over the results.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “serious concerns” that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.
Independent polls had predicted Sunday’s vote would bring an end to 25 years of “Chavismo,” the populist movement founded by Maduro’s socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.
News Editor