Maduro re-elected Venezuela president
CARACAS: Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro has won a new six-year term, but his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship.
Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis.
Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said on Friday Maduro took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his closest challenger Henri Falcon, who broke with an opposition boycott to stand.
Turnout at the election was just 46.1%, the election board said, way down from the 80% registered at the last presidential vote in 2013. The opposition said that figure was inflated, putting participation at nearer 30%.
“The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognise it,” said Falcon, a former state governor.
Maduro had welcomed Falcon’s candidacy, which gave some legitimacy to a process critics at home and around the world had condemned in advance as the “coronation” of a dictator.
Falcon, a former member of the Socialist Party who went over to the opposition in 2010, said he was outraged at the government’s placing of nearly 13,000 pro-government stands called “red spots” close to polling stations nationwide.
Mainly poor Venezuelans were asked to scan state-issued “fatherland cards” at red tents after voting in hope of receiving a “prize” promised by Maduro, which opponents said was akin to vote-buying. The “fatherland cards” are required to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers.
A third presidential candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, followed Falcon in slamming irregularities during Sunday’s vote and calling for a new election.