Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro wins 3rd term: Who is he and why is opposition claiming irregularities in presidential polls?

Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner in Venezuela's presidential election on Sunday, even as his opponents were preparing to dispute the results, setting up a high-stakes showdown that will determine whether the South American nation transitions away from one party rule.

Shortly after midnight, the National Electoral Council said Maduro secured 51 per cent of the vote, overcoming opposition candidate Edmundo González, who garnered 44 per cent. It said the results were based on a tally of 80 per cent of voting stations, marking an irreversible trend.

But the electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, didn't immediately release the official tallies from each of the 15,797 voting centres nationwide, hampering the opposition's ability to challenge the results after claiming it had the voting acts for only 30 per cent of the ballot boxes.

The delay in announcing results — six hours after polls were supposed to close — indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro's opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.

Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed Gonzalez trouncing Maduro.

Maduro, in seeking a third term, faced his toughest challenge yet from the unlikeliest of opponents in Gonzalez: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters before being tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado.

Opposition leaders were already celebrating, online and outside a few voting centres, what they assured was a landslide victory for González.

“I'm so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of one voting centre in a working class neighbourhood of Caracas to announce results showing González more than doubled Maduro's vote count. Dozens standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.

“This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. "We are all tired of this yoke.” 

Earlier, US Vice President Kamala Harris offered her support. “The United States stands with the people of Venezuela who expressed their voice in today's historic presidential election,” Harris wrote on the social media platform X. “The will of the Venezuelan people must be respected." Voters started lining up at some voting centres across the country before dawn Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.

The election will have ripple effects throughout the Americas, with government opponents and supporters alike signalling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad should Maduro win another six year term.

Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushing wages, spurring hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families due to migration.

The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intra party divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.

Machado was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years. A former lawmaker, she swept the opposition's October primary with over 90 per cent of the vote.

After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That's when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.

Sunday's ballot also featured eight other candidates challenging Maduro, but only González threatened Maduro's rule.

After voting, Maduro said he would recognise the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.

“No one is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognise and will recognise the electoral referee, the official announcements and I will make sure they are recognised.” Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven oil reserves, and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy. But it entered into a free fall after Maduro took the helm. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that soared past 130,000 per cent led first to social unrest and then mass emigration.

Economic sanctions from the US seeking to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection — which the US and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate — only deepened the crisis.

Maduro's pitch to voters in this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4 per cent this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after having shrunk 71 per cent from 2012 to 2020.

But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under USD 200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of basic staples — sufficient to feed a family of four for a month — costs an estimated USD 385.

The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country's currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.

González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela's vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years didn't materialise. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from AP/PTI)