Opposition disputes ruling party wins
Pollsters had projected wave of discontent over economic calamity
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s National Electoral Council said candidates for the socialist movement founded by the late President Hugo Chavez won nearly all of the 23 governorships up for grabs in Sunday’s regional elections. Opposition leaders disputed the accuracy of the vote count.
Independent pollsters had projected the opposition would ride a wave of discontent over Venezuela’s economic calamity and win a majority of the state elections for the first time in nearly two decades of socialist rule.
Tibisay Lucena, the pro-government president of the electoral council, said socialist party candidates won 17 of the 22 races in which the outcomes were considered “irreversible” late Sunday. One race was still undecided.
Lucena said 61 per cent of the nation’s 18 million voters participated in the elections, far higher than many had anticipated.
Even before results were announced, opposition leader Gerardo Blyde said the opposition’s count would be “very different.”
“We have already alerted the international community and we are alerting the country,” Blyde said.
Disputed results threatened to heighten an already tense standoff between the government and opposition.
“There is a wide disparity between the poll numbers and the results which show that these elections were not free and fair and don’t reflect the will of the people,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue. “I think that’s going to deepen the polarization.”
The election comes during one of the most turbulent years in recent Venezuelan history. Four months of anti-government protests that began in April left at least 120 people dead, mostly young men in their 20s and 30s. In August, a new pro-government constitutional assembly was installed with virtually unlimited powers after an election that was boycotted by the opposition and that electoral officials were accused of manipulating by more than 1 million votes.
Throughout Sunday, President Nicolas Maduro and socialist party leaders said the election would be proof that Venezuela remains a democracy and not a dictatorship, as a rising number of foreign leaders have begun to call the embattled nation. Few checks and balances remain on Maduro’s rule after the constitutional assembly declared itself superior to all other branches of government and replaced the nation’s outspoken chief prosecutor with a socialist ally of the president.
“They’ve said we are a dictatorship,” Maduro said in a televised address to the nation during the day. “No. We are a democratic people, rebellious, and with an egalitarian sensibility.”
After results were announced, Maduro said he had “absolute faith” in the count and would ask the constitutional assembly to order an audit of the vote in order to extinguish any cries of fraud.
— The Associated Press