Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s leader, has been declared the winner of the country’s tumultuous presidential election early Monday.
This outcome came despite significant momentum from an opposition movement confident that this would be the year to oust Maduro’s socialist-inspired party.
According to BBC News, the election was marred by numerous irregularities, prompting citizens to protest angrily at voting centers even as the results were being announced.
With 80 percent of voting stations counted, the country’s election authority announced that Nicolas Maduro had secured 51.2 percent of the vote, while Edmundo González, the main opposition candidate, garnered 44.2 percent.
Maduro’s government has been accused of fabricating election results in the past, and this tally was immediately challenged by the opposition and several officials in the region.
“We won and the whole world knows it,” said María Corina Machado, the country’s most popular opposition leader, to reporters in Caracas, the capital, early Monday. She described the declared result as “impossible,” citing information her team had collected about turnout.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken, speaking to reporters in Tokyo, expressed the U.S. government’s “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.”
