Politics
Venezuelan opposition declares victory as communist election council reports suspect vote counts
The second bulletin of the Venezuelan electoral body is released five days after the elections in the South American country
August 2, 2024 2:42pm
Updated: September 3, 2024 12:09am
The National Electoral Council (CNE) of Venezuela said this Friday that dictator Nicolás Maduro was re-elected in the presidential elections last Sunday with 51.95% of the votes, further reporting that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia won 43.18% of support with 96.87% of the ballots counted.
CNE President Elvis Amoroso read this second bulletin, after the first one presented on Sunday with 80% of the ballots purportedly accounted for, but without the agency publishing the disaggregated results, which is required by regulation.
According to widespread reports, the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) and opposition coalition González Urrutia won the presidency by a wide margin, which has been recognized by countries such as the United States, Argentina, Uruguay and Peru.
After the opposition’s fraud complaint, numerous protests arose in Venezuela that resulted in 16 deaths and more than 1,200 detainees, a situation that the international community has had in its sights and has been the center of multiple diplomatic discussions.
Despite this, and a purported “massive [cyber[-attack” on the system, Maduro was still declared by the reigning communist regime as the winner.
According to this second announcement, the Chavista candidate obtained 6,408,844 ballots, while González Urrutia, standard bearer of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), gathered 5,326,104, in a vote in which 59.97% of the electoral roll participated. The Chavista controlled agency also alleged there was a 0.41% margin of error due to some anomaly in the process.
The CNE reported that Luis Eduardo Martínez, backed by traditional parties, came in third place while the other seven candidates gained such low vote amounts, as pollsters predicted, they had no chance of victory.
Amoroso said at the press conference that the CNE has suffered “massive computer attacks from different parts of the world” that "delayed the transmission and processing of results, an assertion that is being investigated by the Maduro controlled Prosecutor's Office. Reports suggest the regime is so far inferring that anti-Chavista leader María Corina Machado and other opponents are responsible, but none of these allegations have been independently verified.
