Venezuela’s President Maduro wins third term: Electoral authority

Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro has been re-elected as the country’s president to take power for a third term, the electoral council has announced.

Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral body, said the 61-year-old Maduro won 51.2 percent of votes cast Sunday, securing a third six-year term in office.

Amoroso told reporters that opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia had obtained 44.2 percent of votes.

In first words after the National Electoral Council of Venezuela declared him re-elected, Maduro praised more than 900 election observers who monitored the election, and denounced those alleging election fraud, saying, “We’ve seen this movie many times before.”

“It’s the move of the extreme right. It came out 20 years ago, many of you hadn’t been born yet, and they tried to besmirch the results back then – calling ‘fraud’ were all these press releases,” he told the cheering crowd of supporters.

“They are ugly faces. The gorgeous ones are the people who are here and noble.”

He also promised “peace, stability, and justice”, describing the results of the elections as a victory over foreign interference.

The Venezuelan president urged the international community to “respect” the results of the elections.

“As the president of the republic, I ask for respect for our constitution, our public powers, and our sovereign life,” he said. “There is a constitution, there are institutions, and there is the National Electoral Council. Sixteen audits are conducted, but in which country is the electoral system reviewed so thoroughly to ensure its integrity?”

Maduro also accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system, noting that the electoral system “suffered massive hacking.”

“We already know who did it and who ordered it. The case is in the hands of the prosecutor’s office,” he added.

He described himself as a resilient leader, committed to upholding Venezuela’s sovereignty and stability amidst external pressures and internal challenges.

“Neither the blockade nor fascism could prevail in Venezuela, the land of Bolívar and Chávez. It will not happen today or ever because we were not born on the day of the cowards, the lukewarm, or the timorous. We were born the day the light of the liberator left this homeland,” he stated.

Maduro, a former bus driver who became president following the death of his mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013, was re-elected in 2018 despite the US-orchestrated opposition.

Since November 2019, the US-led sanctions have pushed inflation in Venezuela to above 4,000 percent.