Electoral Authority: Maduro Secures Third Term as Venezuela’s President

By Staff, Agencies

Nicolas Maduro has been re-elected as Venezuela's president, securing a third term in office, according to the country's electoral council.

Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral body, announced that the 61-year-old Maduro won 51.2 percent of the votes cast on Sunday, earning him another six-year term. Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia received 44.2 percent of the votes, Amoroso told reporters.

Maduro praised the over 900 election observers who monitored the election and condemned allegations of election fraud. “We’ve seen this movie many times before,” he said, addressing a cheering crowd of supporters. “It’s the move of the extreme right. It came out 20 years ago, many of you hadn’t been born yet, and they tried to besmirch the results back then – calling ‘fraud’ were all these press releases.”

Referring to his supporters, Maduro added, “They are ugly faces. The gorgeous ones are the people who are here and noble.”

A former bus driver, Maduro became president following the death of his mentor Hugo Chavez in 2013 and was re-elected in 2018 despite opposition orchestrated by the US.

Since November 2019, US-led sanctions have pushed inflation in Venezuela to above 4,000 percent.