Venezuela’s Struggle
The wave of protests in Venezuela following President Nicolas Maduro’s contentious third-term election win marks yet another chapter in the country’s struggle for democratic integrity.
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council has confirmed that President Nicolas Maduro won last week’s elections with 51.95 per cent of the vote.
With 96.87 per cent of the ballots counted, Maduro received 6,408,844 votes, while his main Opposition rival garnered 5,326,104 votes (43.18 per cent), according to Elvis Amoroso, Head of the National Electoral Council, on Friday.
Amoroso also announced the vote percentages for other candidates: Luis Martinez received 1.24 per cent of the vote, Antonio Ecarri, 0.94 per cent; Benjamin Rausseo, 0.75 per cent; Jose Brito, 0.68 per cent; Javier Bertucci, 0.52 per cent; Claudio Fermin, 0.33 per cent; Enrique Marquez, 0.24 per cent; and Daniel Ceballos, 0.16 per cent, Xinhua news agency reported.
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He said a total of more than 12,386,000 votes were counted, representing 59.97 per cent of the eligible electorate, with a little more than 50,000 votes, or 0.41 per cent, declared invalid.
Amoroso blamed “massive cyberattacks” against the election technological infrastructure and the country’s main telecommunications companies for the delayed transmission of results and the delayed disclosure process.
Despite the burning of electoral offices, voting centres, and what he described as “terrorist attacks,” Amoroso said the National Electoral Council managed to transmit the majority of the results.
He expressed gratitude to the Armed Forces, international observers, and officials, who he said had made the July 28 presidential elections possible.
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