Caracas, July 29 (EFE).- Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was re-elected for a third consecutive term Sunday, obtaining 51.20 percent of the votes according to the first official bulletin, according to the election commission, as opposition leaders challenged the result.
Elvis Amoroso, Venezuelan National Electoral Council president, announced the results more than six hours after the closing of polling centers, adding that 80 percent of the votes had been counted.
According to the first report, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia obtained 4,445,978 votes, amounting to 44.2 percent of the share.
Anti-Chavez leader Maria Corina Machado said Monday that the “new president-elect” of Venezuela is Gonzalez Urrutia, despite the council announcing Maduro’s victory.
“Venezuela has a new president-elect and it is Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. We won and everyone knows it,” the former deputy told reporters, accompanied by the standard-bearer of the Democratic Unitary Platform, the main opposition bloc.
Amoroso said that “in the next few hours” the council would publish on its website the details of the results, and deliver a digital report on the outcome of the contest to the 38 political parties that competed.
Before providing the results, Amoroso said the data transmission system suffered an attack, which will be investigated, adding that this was why the announcement of the winner took longer than expected.
During the campaign, Maduro had already said he would win the elections, that he is the “only” one capable of maintaining peace and prosperity in the country, burdened by numerous economic sanctions, especially by the United States. Maduro blames Washington for his country’s crisis.
From Jan. 10, the date on which the new mandate begins, the president will face a third six-year term at the head of the country, governed by the late Hugo Chavez’s ideology for the past 25 years.
