CARACAS/BARQUISIMETO - Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro comfortably won re-election in a controversial vote on Sunday, the election board said, though his main rivals both declared the poll illegitimate due to alleged widespread irregularities.

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, due to a boycott by Venezuela’s mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighborhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace. He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said.

Despite his unpopularity over the OPEC member’s economic meltdown, the 55-year-old former bus driver was benefiting from a boycott by the mainstream opposition, a ban on his two most popular rivals, and state institutions in loyalists’ hands.

The vote could trigger additional sanctions from the United States and more censure from the European Union and Latin America. The Trump administration said it would not recognise the “sham” election and was considering oil sanctions.

Maduro, the self-described “son” of former President Hugo Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent. </s> Nicolas Maduro has been re- elected as the President of Venezuela and has won a new six-year term on Sunday, on the other hand 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…

Nicolas Maduro has been re- elected as the President of Venezuela and has won a new six-year term on Sunday, on the other hand 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.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector.

Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he 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.

“They underestimated me,” Mr. Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside his Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd. </s> CARACAS, April 27 Venezuela's electoral authority said on Saturday the opposition created false hopes about a vote audit being prepared after President Nicolas Maduro's narrow election win, adding that his rival had failed to present compelling proof of foul play.

The National Electoral Council had stressed from the start that the "expanded" audit it agreed to after the April 14 vote would not change the results, which made Maduro the successor to the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles says there were thousands of irregularities during the vote, and that his own calculations showed he won. He says he will challenge the outcome in the OPEC nation's courts.

"We have always insisted that Capriles had the right to challenge the process," Tibisay Lucena, president of the electoral council, said in a televised national broadcast.

"But it is also his obligation to present proof."

She dismissed various opposition submissions alleging voting irregularities as lacking key details, and said Capriles had subsequently tried to present the audit in very different terms than the electoral council had agreed to.

"It has been manipulated to generate false expectations about the process, including making it look like the consequence of the wider audit could affect the election results," she said.

Capriles has said that unless the audit includes all the relevant paperwork from polling centers, his team would not take part in a process that would end up being "a joke."

He has conceded that his legal challenge to Maduro's election faces a difficult path through the South American country's courts. Critics say Chavez packed the judiciary with loyal political appointees during his 14 years in power.

Capriles, a 40-year-old centrist state governor, confounded opinion polls to run a close finish against Maduro in the election, held just five weeks after Chavez's death from cancer. Capriles lost by less than two percentage points, according to official results.

The government blames Capriles for post-election violence that it says killed nine people, and the "Chavista"-dominated Congress is investigating him in connection with the unrest.

On Saturday, security forces arrested a retired general who is now a senior official with an opposition party and was recorded on video apparently advising rioters during clashes with police in a Caracas square a day after the election.

The opposition said the arrest was "illegal and cowardly."

The government also has arrested an American citizen it says was financing opposition student protesters to destabilize the country on behalf of an unnamed U.S. intelligence agency.

Relatives and friends of Timothy Hallet Tracy, 34, described him to U.S. media as a documentary-maker who was in Venezuela to make a film about the presidential election.

Some Maduro allies say the violence was proof that the opposition tried to launch a coup, while the opposition accuses the authorities of exaggerating the trouble and counting victims of common crime among its figures.

Both sides have called on their followers to march again on May 1, creating another potential flashpoint.

On Saturday, Maduro was on an official visit to Cuba to strengthen ties between the two countries. Chavez helped support Cuba's economy after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Maduro spoke at a tribute where President Raul Castro described Chavez as Cuba's best friend, and he signed cooperation accords for 51 projects.

Capriles, who accuses Cuba's Castro brothers of meddling in Venezuela's affairs, criticized the trip on Twitter.

"The Big Connected-One (Maduro) goes to Havana to receive instructions from his Boss. We always said it, there's nothing more powerful that the truth!" the opposition leader tweeted. (Editing by Paul Simao) </s> Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has shrugged off international condemnation and allegations of vote buying and electoral fraud to claim a second six-year term at the helm of his crisis-stricken nation.

Addressing crowds of supporters outside the presidential palace in Caracas on Sunday night, Maduro hailed the “impeccable electoral process” that had returned him to power with 67.7% of the vote. 



“This was a historic day! The day of a heroic victory! The day of a beautiful victory - of a truly popular victory,” Maduro shouted.

“The whole of Venezuela has triumphed! Democracy has triumphed! Peace has triumphed! Constitutionality has triumphed [These were] elections that were constitutional, legitimate and legal ... We have a president of the people! A working president!”



Venezuela’s election board put turnout at just 46.1%, way down from the 80% registered at the last presidential vote in 2013, due to a boycott by Venezuela’s mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighbourhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace.

He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said. </s> Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro comfortably won re-election in a controversial vote on Sunday, the election board said, though his main rivals both declared the poll illegitimate due to alleged widespread irregularities.

Turnout at the election was just 46.1 percent, the election board said, way down from the 80 percent registered at the last presidential vote in 2013, due to a boycott by Venezuela's mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighborhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace. He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said. </s> CARACAS: President Nicolas Maduro was unsurprisingly declared winner of Venezuela’s election on Sunday (Monday in Manila) in a poll rejected as invalid by his rivals, who immediately called for fresh elections to be held later this year.

Reeling under a devastating economic crisis, only 46 percent of voters turned out to cast ballots in an election boycotted by the opposition and condemned by much of the international community, but one that hands Maduro a second term until 2025.

“We do not recognize this electoral process as valid, as true,” his main rival Henri Falcon told a news conference, even before the result was announced.

“For us, there were no elections. We have to have new elections in Venezuela.”

Maduro hailed his victory for another six-year term as a “historic record” in a speech to thousands of cheering supporters outside the official Miraflores Palace in Caracas.

“Never before has a presidential candidate taken 68 percent of the popular vote,” he said, to applause.

“We won again! We triumphed again! We are the force of history turned into a permanent popular victory,” said Maduro.

The official result gave Maduro 67.7 percent of the vote, with Falcon a distant second at 21.2 percent. In the last opinion polls before the vote, the pair were running neck-and-neck.

Third-placed Javier Bertucci, an evangelist preacher who polled around 11 percent, joined in the call for new elections.

Maduro, the political heir to the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, has presided over an implosion of the once wealthy oil producer’s economy since taking office in 2013.

Hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages, rising crime and broken water, power and transportation networks have sparked violent unrest, and left Maduro with a 75 percent disapproval rating.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled the South American country in a mass exodus in recent years.

Wearing a bright red shirt that identifies him as a “Chavista,” the president arrived early at a Caracas polling station along with his wife, former prosecutor Cilia Flores.

“Your vote decides: ballots or bullets, motherland or colony, peace or violence, independence or subordination,” said the 55-year-old former bus driver and union leader.

The comments reflected previous ones by the socialist leader that Venezuela is the victim of an “economic war” waged by the conservative opposition and outside powers such as the United States aimed at toppling him.

As the polls opened, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced the “sham” election.

Small queues of voters, mostly Maduro supporters, formed at some polling stations, but others appeared half empty, Agence France-Presse correspondents reported from several cities.

Falcon, a 56-year-old former army officer who failed to gain the endorsement of the main opposition, accused the government of coercing voters.

In a news conference held before the official result announcement, he pointed particularly to so-called “red points”—street stalls set up by the ruling Socialists near polling stations—allegedly to offer handouts in exchange for votes.

The former governor of Venezuela’s Lara state also said polling centers had remained open after the scheduled closing time, and that his monitors were expelled from some of them.

Hundreds of Venezuelans took to the streets in several Latin American capitals, including Bogota, Buenos Aires and Lima—as well as in Madrid—to denounce the vote.

The biggest protest was in Chile’s capital Santiago, where more than 1,000 demonstrated against the election. Chile granted 73,000 visas to Venezuelans fleeing the country last year.

The Chilean government rejected a result that “lacks all legitimacy and does not meet any of the minimum and necessary requirements to be a democratic and transparent election, in accordance with international standards.”

Aware of the popular mood, Maduro had vowed an “economic revolution” if reelected.

Falcon promised to dollarize the economy, return companies expropriated by Chavez and allow humanitarian aid, something the president rejects.

Falcon said fresh elections could be held in November or December, when they are traditionally contested, but they were moved up this year by the country’s all-powerful and pro-government Constituent Assembly, catching the divided and weakened opposition off-guard.

The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) opposition coalition has won support from the United States, the European Union and 14 countries of the Lima Group who called for the vote to be postponed.

Maduro is accused of undermining democracy, usurping the power of the opposition-dominated legislature by replacing it with his Constituent Assembly and cracking down hard on the opposition. Protests in 2017, still fresh in the collective memory, left around 125 people dead.

The MUD’s most popular leaders have been sidelined or detained, the boycott their only remaining weapon.

Despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves, the country faces ruin, with the IMF citing a 45 percent drop in GDP under Maduro.

The crippled oil industry lacks investment and its assets are increasingly prey to debt settlements as the country defaults. </s> The turnout at the Venezuelan presidential election amounted to 46,01%, the official data revealed.

Venezuela held the presidential election on Sunday. This year four candidates ran for the presidency: incumbent President Nicolas Maduro, Reinaldo Quijada, who supported Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez but is dissatisfied with the current government, opposition leader Falcon and Evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci.

Henri Falcon has announced earlier in the day that ha does not recognize results of the presidential election due to alleged mass electoral violations. </s> CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro won a new six-year term on Sunday, 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.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector.

Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he 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.

“They underestimated me,” Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd.

Turnout at the election was just 46.1 percent, the election board said, way down from the 80 percent registered at the last presidential vote in 2013. The opposition said that figure was inflated, putting participation at nearer 30 percent.

An electoral board source told Reuters 32.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots by 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) as most polls shut.

“The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognize 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’s quick rejection of Sunday’s election, and call for a new vote, was therefore a blow to the government’s strategy.

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.

Despite his unpopularity over a national economic meltdown, Maduro benefited on Sunday not just from the opposition boycott but also from a ban on his two most popular rivals and the liberal use of state resources in his campaign.

His tally, however, fell short of the 10 million votes he had said throughout the campaign he wanted to win.

(Graphic on Venezeula election, tmsnrt.rs/2LbYgAC)

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is surrounded by supporters as he speaks during a gathering after the results of the election were released, outside of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

FIGHTING “IMPERIALISM”

Maduro, the self-described “son” of Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.

Attendance appeared thin in many polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia. There were lines, however, at poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro.

“I’m hungry and don’t have a job, but I’m sticking to Maduro,” said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices.

Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: they criticize Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits.

Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration.

Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials - Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami - were hung from a footbridge.

But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment.

“I’m not voting - what’s the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time,” said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days.

With the election behind him, Maduro may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling “Chavismo” movement.

He faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly.

Slideshow (32 Images)

(Graphic on Latin American elections, tmsnrt.rs/2rAQ4l1)

(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla) </s> Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at a military parade for the transition of National Guard command in Caracas, January 16, 2018. Thomson Reuters CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro looked sure to stand for re-election in a presidential vote due by the end of April where the ruling Socialists hope to trump a squabbling opposition despite an economic crisis and foreign sanctions.

The unpopular leader, whom foes decry as a dictator who has wrecked the OPEC member's economy, said he would run if the ruling Socialist Party asked him, even as Venezuelans reel from empty shelves and the world's fastest inflation.

"I'm ready to be a candidate," he told reporters during a rally of cheering red-shirted supporters broadcast on state TV.

The 55-year-old former bus driver and union leader, who succeeded Hugo Chavez in 2013, benefits from a formidable political machinery, a compliant national election board, and a hard core of support from poor Venezuelans reliant on state food handouts.

Critics from opposition politicians to Western powers doubt authorities will allow a free and fair vote, given the barring of some opposition figures from running plus abuse of state resources in campaigning.

Some fear outright fraud.

"These are not elections. It's a military occupation with a fraudulent election board," said hardline opposition activist Maria Corina Machado, referring to the armed forces' major role in government and the board's past pro-Maduro stance.

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro and Nestor Reverol, general commander of the Venezuelan National Guard, at Maduro's annual report of the state of the nation, at the National Assembly in Caracas, January 15, 2016. Reuters

Announcing the presidential poll would be held by the end of April, the pro-government Constituent Assembly superbody legislature said another election in Venezuela was further evidence of its democratic credentials despite a recent raft of international sanctions.

The United States, Canada, and the European Union have all taken measures against Venezuela's government over rights and corruption allegations, hurting the government's image and spooking banks from working with Caracas.

Maduro blasted the European Union for imposing "grotesque" sanctions this week on seven senior Venezuelan officials, including a travel ban and an asset freeze, and took aim at Spain's conservative prime minister.

"Mariano Rajoy, get on all fours, my friend, because the people are going to slap you," Maduro said, flanked by cabinet members and wife Cilia Flores, whom he refers to as the "First Combatant."

Should the presidential vote be perceived as fraudulent, further foreign sanctions could come, including from US President Donald Trump who has made opposition to Maduro a prominent feature of his foreign policy.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said on Tuesday she did not think it would be a good idea for Maduro to run for re-election. "Certainly the people would have to decide," Nauert said.

The Lima Group, a regional group of Latin American countries, said an election held under the present conditions would lack legitimacy. The group also called on Venezuela to release political prisoners.

Who will take on Maduro?

A demonstrator is detained at a rally during a strike called to protest Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government in Caracas, July 27, 2017. Thomson Reuters

It is unclear whom the Democratic Unity opposition coalition would attempt to field. The opposition plans to hold primaries to choose a candidate, but the hasty presidential vote may make that tricky.

Its most popular leaders are almost all sidelined from politics — jailed, in exile, or barred from holding office. Months of protests last year failed to dislodge Maduro but resulted in at least 125 deaths.

"The majority of Venezuelans loathe his government and his circle. If our people are allowed to decide, they are out!" one opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, said.

Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate, is prohibited from holding office over allegations of "administrative irregularities." Former mayor Leopoldo Lopez is under house arrest for leading protests against Maduro, while his young protege Freddy Guevara has taken refuge in the Chilean embassy to avoid charges of plotting against Maduro.

The announcement could also derail talks between the government and the opposition in the Dominican Republic, although chances of a breakthrough were always slim.

The opposition could succumb to in-fighting about what conditions to accept in the vote.

During the governors' election of last October, opposition candidates for the first time gave convincing evidence that elections authorities had altered results in one state, though Maduro scoffed at that and said the system was the cleanest in the world.

With cynicism toward all politicians running high among Venezuelans, many are clamoring for a nontraditional, outside candidate. The name of Lorenzo Mendoza, billionaire head of private food company Polar, is on many people's lips, but he has given no indication of wanting to stand.

"The majority want an outsider," said Dimitris Pantoulas, a Caracas-based political consultant.

(Reporting by Vivian Sequera and Alexandra Ulmer; additional reporting by Andreina Aponte, Corina Pons, Brian Ellsworth and Arshad Mohammed in Washington and Felipe Iturrieta in Santiago; writing by Alexandra Ulmer and Andrew Cawthorne; editing by Matthew Lewis and Grant McCool)
Incumbent President Nicolás Maduro wins the presidential election amidst allegations of massive irregularities by his main rivals.