Nicolas Maduro re-elected prez amid outcry over vote
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, a former governor 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 56-year-old former state governor, looking downcast.
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. REUTERS