Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro won election to a new term, the country’s election authority said early Monday, after a vote in which the opposition expressed confidence it won.
The National Electoral Council released its results six hours after polls closed, saying Maduro had 51% of the vote compared to 44% for opposition candidate Edmundo González.
The results did not include vote tallies from individual polling centers.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado rejected the election authority’s result, saying instead González had won 70% of the vote.
While Maduro celebrated his win, many governments throughout the Americas called for transparency in the vote count.
“We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.
Maduro, speaking to a rally of supporters early Monday, promised “peace and security.” He dismissed foreign criticism while presenting Venezuela’s election authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, as more legitimate than systems in other countries such as the United States.
Chile’s President Gabriel Boric called the election results “difficult to believe.”
Boric said on X that the Venezuelan people and the international community demand full transparency of the votes and the counting process, and for independent international observers to verify the results.
Foreign ministers from Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay made a similar call in a joint statement, saying a transparent count is the only way to ensure the results respect the will of the Venezuelan voters.
Maduro is serving his second term as president, and Sunday’s vote represented his toughest electoral challenge.
González is a retired diplomat who was thrust into the campaign in April after Venezuela’s Supreme Court blocked Machado from the ballot.
Some information for this story was provided by The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
