Caracas, Venezuela Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of Venezuela's presidential election on Sunday but his opponents are contesting the results, setting up a crucial showdown that could determine whether the South American country moves away from one-party rule.
The National Electoral Commission announced shortly after midnight that Maduro had won 51% of the vote, beating opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who got 44%. The commission said the results were based on the counting of 80% of polling stations and showed an irreversible trend.
But the electoral commission, controlled by Maduro's allies, did not immediately release the official count from 15,797 polling stations across the country, preventing the opposition from challenging the results, claiming they only had the results from 30 percent of the ballot boxes.
Fernando Vergara/AP
The delay in announcing the results – six hours after polls were scheduled to close – suggested there had been intense debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro's opponents declared victory earlier in the evening.
Opposition leaders said results collected from campaign representatives at polling stations showed Mr Gonzalez leading Mr Maduro by a large margin.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said early Monday that Gonzalez had received 70 percent of the vote, according to the AFP news agency.
“I want to say to the whole of Venezuela and to the world that Venezuela has a new president and that candidate is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia,” Machado told reporters, adding: “We have won.”
“The United States has serious concerns that the vote results do not reflect the will of the people, and the international community is watching closely,” U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said on Monday.
In a statement released earlier in the day, just before the election results were announced, Blinken called for the votes to be counted “fairly and transparently,” saying: “To ensure transparency and accountability, I urge election authorities to release detailed vote tally sheets (“ACTUS”).”
Other countries reserved their recognition of the results as the electoral commission promised to announce an official tally within the “coming hours.”
Among them is Chile.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has announced are hard to believe,” said Gabriel Borik, a Chilean left-wing leader. “We will not accept results that cannot be verified.”
Speaking after midnight on Monday, President Maduro said his victory was a victory for peace and stability, and reiterated his insistence throughout the campaign that Venezuela's electoral system was transparent, according to Reuters.
Maduro, seeking a third term, faces his toughest challenge yet from an unlikely opponent: Gonzalez, a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters until he was named in April as a last-minute replacement for Machado, a perceived strongman.
Opposition leaders were already celebrating Gonzalez's landslide victory online and outside some polling stations.
“I'm very happy,” said Merling Fernandez, 31, a bank employee, as opposition representatives emerged from a polling station in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce the results, showing Gonzalez had received more than twice as many votes as Maduro. Dozens of people nearby broke into an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, fighting back tears. “We are all tired of this bondage.”
Earlier, US Vice President Kamala Harris also voiced her support. “The United States stands with the Venezuelan people who made their voices heard in today's historic presidential election,” Harris wrote on social media platform X. “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.”
Voters began lining up before dawn on Sunday at several polling stations across the country, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
The election will have ripple effects across the Americas, with opponents and supporters alike signaling that if Maduro wins another six-year term, they will join the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left the country to seek opportunities abroad.
Authorities scheduled Sunday's election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the respected leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013 and entrusted Maduro with the mantle of the Bolivarian Revolution. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for driving down wages, promoting hunger, sapping the oil industry and separating families through migration.
The opposition has managed to consolidate its support for one candidate after years of internal divisions and election boycotts that thwarted its ambitions of toppling the ruling party.
Machado had been barred from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court. The former lawmaker won a landslide victory in opposition primary elections in October with more than 90% of the vote. After being barred from running for president, he chose a university professor as his replacement, but the National Electoral Commission also barred him from registering. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
There were eight candidates challenging Maduro in Sunday's vote, but Gonzalez was the only one who posed a threat to Maduro's power.
After the vote, President Maduro said he would recognize the election results and called on all other candidates to do the same.
“No one will create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and will continue to recognize the electoral jury and the official announcements, and I will ensure that they are recognized.”
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and was once Latin America's most advanced economy, but it has plummeted since Maduro came to power. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation of more than 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass migration.
U.S. sanctions aimed at forcing Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which the United States and dozens of other countries have condemned as illegitimate, have deepened the crisis.
Maduro has touted economic stability as his biggest selling point to voters in the election, citing entrepreneurship, a stable currency and low inflation. The International Monetary Fund projects the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, to grow 4% this year, the fastest in Latin America.
But most Venezuelans have not seen their quality of life improve. Many earn less than $200 a month, and families struggle to afford basics; some have to work second or even third jobs. A basket of basic foods, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs an estimated $385.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns on Venezuela's vast interior, which has not seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years, and promised a government that would create enough jobs to allow Venezuelans abroad to return and reunite with their families.
