2024-08-05 07:30:18
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected Sunday for a third consecutive six-year term, the pro-government electoral authority said, after a campaign marred by accusations of opposition intimidation and fears of fraud.
With 80% of the votes counted, Maduro won with 51.2% of the votes (5.15 million) over opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, who obtained 44.2% (4.45 million), according to the president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso.
The trend is “strong and irreversible,” he said.
Maduro then headed to a platform at the Miraflores Palace, where a group of supporters awaited him with music and dancing.
Shortly before the National Electoral Council’s announcement, the opposition command had denounced irregularities in the vote count.
“We ask, in the name of peace in Venezuela, in the name of credibility in the vote as an instrument for making the major decisions of the civilized world, that they do not take a single false step,” declared Omar Barboza, secretary general of the Democratic Platform coalition, which supports González Urrutia.
“The results are undeniable. The country chose a peaceful change,” González Urrutia wrote on the social network X.
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© Agence France-Presse
