Nicholas Maduro Wins Venezuelan Presidency Again In A Hotly Contested Election

By Satyaki Chakraborty

President of Venezuela Nicholas Maduro won the Presidential elections held on July 28 by defeating the national opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez. As per the election council announcement, Maduro got 51.2 per cent of the votes polled as against 44.2 per cent received by Gonzalez. The council said that with about 80 per cent of the vote counted, Maduro had secured more than five million compared to 4.4 million in favour of the opposition candidate.

The incumbent President Maduro took over the presidency in 2013 after the death of the former President Hugo Chavez who ruled the oil rich South American country from 1999 to 2013 till his death as the leader of the socialist coalition. Maduro who won the 2018 Presidential elections, will have a term of six years after this 2024 win.

After the announcement made by the electoral council, President Maduro told his cheering supporters that he would defend the people, the constitution and the laws of the country, Maduro dedicated his win to his mentor, the late president Hugo Chávez, who anointed Maduro as his successor shortly before his premature death in 2013. “Long live Chávez. Chávez is alive!” Maduro shouted.

The result was celebrated by Maduro allies including the Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez who hailed a “historic victory” and called it a triumph of “the dignity and courage of the Venezuelan people”. “The people spoke and the revolution won,” he tweeted.

Bolivia’s leftwing leader, Luis Arce, also celebrated the result of an election that was held on what would have been Chávez’s 70th birthday. “What a great way to remember the Comandante Hugo Chávez,” Arce tweeted. However, some other Latin American nations decided to wait till the detailed poll results were announced.. Chile’s president Gabriel Boric said that Chile would not recognize any result that had not been verified. Peru’s foreign minister rejected the results.

The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado – who had thrown her weight behind González’s campaign after being banned from running herself – rejected the result, claiming the opposition had won in every single state. The far right leader said that Gonzalez has won in every state and he is the natural President elect. An ardent supporter of Donald Trump, Machado copied her mentor by saying that the election has been stolen by President Maduro.

The US vice-president Kamala Harris tweeted: “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela who expressed their voice in today’s historic presidential election. The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected.” The United States has “serious concerns” the Venezuelan election result declaring President Maduro the winner is not accurate, Secretary of State Antony Blinken says. “We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” Blinken said while in Japan. Earlier he said the US wanted votes in Venezuela’s presidential election to be counted “fairly and transparently”.

President Maduro, 61 expressed his determination to fight the opposition propaganda on the results and told his supporters to be vigilant and foil any attempt by the opposition to defy the verdict of the people given on Sunday’s elections. He mentioned of the international observers who have commended the fair and peaceful polling in the elections.

After calling the election, the head of the National Electoral Council urged Venezuelans to respect the results, adding he has requested an investigation into alleged “acts of terrorism” during the vote. “We would like to report that we requested the attorney general to open an investigation into the terrorist acts perpetrated against our vote counting and voting system and against electoral officials,” said Elvis Amoroso. “We issued a call to each Venezuelan to respect the law of the constitution and the mandate of the people as expressed at the polling station,” he added.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a country in northern South America that borders the Caribbean Sea in north and the North Atlantic Ocean in east. Neighbouring countries are Colombia in west and south west, Brazil in south and Guyana in east. The country shares also overlapping maritime borders with Barbados, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and Puerto Rico.

With an area of 912,000 km² Venezuela is slightly more than 2.5 times the size of Germany or slightly more than twice the size of the U.S. state of California. Venezuela has a population of 31.1 million inhabitants (in 2015) of whom 6 million live in the capital and largest city Caracas. The country’s population is concentrated along the Caribbean coast, only 5% of all Venezuelans live south of the course of Orinoco river. Official language is Spanish. India has a solid economic relations with the Venezuela oil industry as crude oil importer. (IPA Service)