By Enyichukwu Enemanna
President of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, has secured a fresh term in office after he was declared the winner of the country’s presidential election on Sunday.
Maduro, 62, won re-election with 51.2 percent of votes, but the opposition and key regional neighbours have rejected the official results declared by the nation’s electoral body.
The opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent, the electoral council announced.
Maduro addressed supporters at the presidential palace minutes after the announcement to celebrate the declaration from his loyalist electoral authority.
“I can say, before the people of Venezuela and the world, I am Nicolas Maduro Moros, the re-elected president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Maduro said.
“There will be peace, stability and justice. Peace and respect for the law.”
The opposition coalition insists it had garnered 70 percent of the vote, rejecting the figures from the electoral authority believed to be members of who are loyal to Maduro.
“We want to say to all of Venezuela and the world that Venezuela has a new president-elect and it is (candidate) Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia,” opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told journalists, adding: “We won.”
Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves also denounced the official result as “fraudulent,” while Chile’s President described it as “hard to believe.”
Peru announced it had recalled its ambassador for consultation over the results.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed “serious concerns” that the result did not reflect the will of Venezuelan voters.
Independent polls had predicted Sunday’s vote would bring an end to 25 years of “Chavismo,” the populist movement founded by Maduro’s socialist predecessor and mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.
Since 2013, Maduro has been at the helm of the once wealthy petro-state where GDP dropped by 80 percent in a decade, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.
He is accused of locking up critics and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.
Gonzalez Urrutia had replaced popular Machado on the ticket after authorities loyal to Maduro excluded her from the race.
Machado, who campaigned far and wide for her proxy, had urged voters on Sunday to keep “vigil” at their polling stations in the “decisive hours” of counting amid widespread fears of fraud.
Maduro had earlier warned of a “bloodbath” if he lost.
