Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro wins 3rd term as Prez

Caracas: Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner in Venezuela’s presidential election 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% of the vote, overcoming the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, who garnered 44%.

But the electoral authority, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, didn’t immediately release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, hampering the opposition’s ability to challenge the results after claiming it had data for only 30% of the ballot boxes.

Foreign leaders held off recognizing the results as the electoral council promised to release official tallies in the “coming hours.”

“The Maduro regime should understand that the results it published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile. “We won’t recognize any result that is not verifiable.”

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the U.S. has “serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” speaking in Tokyo.

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.

When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies for trying to hack the voting

system.