Nicholas Maduro has won reelection in an election process that the US and its allies refuse to acknowledge as legitimate, together with the Venezuelan opposition candidate, Henri Falcon. Maduro won with over 68% of the popular vote, while Falcon received considerably less.
Falcon, perhaps taking a cue from Hillary Clinton, seems as if he just won’t concede the fact that the people of Venezuela just didn’t want him to govern them.
telesur reports:
President Nicolas Maduro won the Venezuelan presidential elections Sunday, gaining a second presidential term for six years with more than 5.8 million votes, the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced Sunday night.
With 92.6 percent of the votes counted, Maduro had 5.8 million votes, while his closest rival, former governor Henri Falcón getting 1.8 million votes, said CNE President Tibisay Lucena who added that in total, 8.6 million Venezuelans voted, out of an electoral registry of 20.5 million people.
“We are the force of history turned into popular victory,” Maduro told his supporters after the CNE announcement. “Thank you to facing so many aggressions and lies, thank you for overcoming it, and for making me president of Venezuela for the next term.”
The president further thanked the Venezuelan people for their support and voting him into a second term with 68 percent of the vote. “The people in Venezuela have to be respected.”
“I demand the respect for all of the Venezuelan People. I’m the president of all of the Venezuelans. I call for a dialogue process. Permanent dialogue is what Venezuela needs.”
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.
“I want to congratulate the revolutionary youth in Venezuela and all social movements in Venezuela for this victory,” Maduro said. “I look to the future, and I propose to all the leaders of the opposition to meet and talk about Venezuela. Democratically, let’s resolve Venezuela’s problems.”
Maduro’s main electoral opposition was Henri Falcon, who had promised to convert Venezuela’s currency to the U.S.-dollar.
In the hour before the results were announced, Falcon said that he wasn’t going to recognize the results, that they were “illegitimate.” He blamed abstentionist sectors of the opposition for his loss, and called for new elections to be called for October.
This election was something like a battle between Washington and the people of Venezuela. Washington has long considered that no election in Venezuela can be considered legitimate unless the outcome is for a pro-Washington candidate.
In this case, Falcon appears to be Washington’s man, and reports of the US State Department and other politicians slamming the outcome of this election installing a patriotic candidate, saying that the elections were somehow rigged or illegitimate will be hitting the headlines of mainstream media outlets right and left. Despite the fact that the elections process entertained many international observers:
Some 150 international observers from 30 countries and international organizations were in Venezuela for the elections.
With most of the votes counted, Maduro had 5.8 million votes, while his closest rival, former governor Henri Falcón getting 1.8 million votes, said CNEPresident Tibisay Lucena who added that in total, 8.6 million Venezuelans voted, out of an electoral registry of 20.5 million people.
Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, former Spanish Prime Minister and also an international observer, gave positive feedback about the presidential elections.
“I do not have any doubt about the voting process. It is an advanced automatic voting system. I come here to keep the peace, coordinate and promote dialogue to improve the democratic mechanism here. What I need to do here is to see whether people can cast their ballots at their own discretion. Now we all see how people vote, don’t we?” he said.
Other international observers monitoring the Venezuelan elections said Sunday that the vote took place without any incidents, in an atmosphere full exercise of civic duty.
As a result of this election, namely Maduro’s victory, Washington will utilize its claim of illegitimate elections to justify further sanctions against the struggling South American country, as is its way of waging economic warfare on nations whose domestic and/or foreign policy doesn’t suit the ‘interests’ of Washington’s deep state. One wonders when the international community is going to tire of hearing the ‘S’-word coming out of Washington, recognizing the global harm that they do to international trade, as well as the suffering that is artificially imposed on the citizenry of nations unfortunate enough to have incurred Washington’s wrath.
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