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Maduro re-elected as Venezuela’s leader
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) said Maduro won with 51.21% of votes compared with 44.2% for his rival, the former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia.
The council said that with about 80% of votes counted, Maduro had secured more than 5m compared with González’s 4.4m.
The result was immediately challenged by rivals and several governments in the region and beyond.
The Venezuelan opposition dismissed the CNE’s announcement as fraudulent and promised to challenge the result.
It said its candidate had won with 70% of the votes and insisted he was the rightful president-elect.
The opposition said vote tallies it had received, as well as quick counts, showed González had a lead of 40 percentage points over the incumbent.
Opposition parties had united behind González in an attempt to unseat President Maduro after 11 years in power. Opinion polls conducted ahead of the election had suggested González would roundly defeat the president.
While China, Iran, and Russia congratulated Maduro on his re-election Washington and other foreign governments from Europe and some South American counties cast doubt on official results. Maduro dedicated his win to Chávez, who anointed Maduro as his successor shortly before his death in 2013. “Long live Chávez. Chávez is alive!” Maduro shouted.
Addressing supporters in the capital, Caracas, the 61-year-old leader said: “I am Nicolás Maduro Moros – the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela … and I will defend our democracy, our law and our people.”
“The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” González said in his first remarks.
The opposition leader, María Corina Machado – who had thrown her weight behind González’s campaign after being banned from running – rejected the result, claiming the opposition had won in every single state.
“We won and everybody knows it,” she said. “We haven’t just defeated them politically and morally, today we defeated them with votes,” Machado told journalists, claiming González should be considered the country’s president-elect.