Venezuela Vote: Maduro re-elected as opponents denounce 'farce'

Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro was re-elected for a new six-year term on Sunday in a poll tainted by allegations of vote-rigging and fraud.

The National Election Council (CNE) said socialist party leader Maduro took 5.8mn votes - 67.7% of the total - compared to 1.8mn for former Lara state governor Henri Falcón. Evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci was third with 925,000 votes.

"This was a historic day. The day of a heroic victory. The day of a beautiful victory - of a truly popular victory," Maduro told followers at a victory rally outside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.

Maduro, a 55-year-old former bus driver who rose to power in 2013 following the death of his predecessor Hugo Chávez, vowed to defy international sanctions and lift the country out of its deep economic abyss.

"The whole of Venezuela has triumphed. Democracy has triumphed. Peace has triumphed. Constitutionality has triumphed," he shouted. "[These were] elections that were constitutional, legitimate and legal ... We have a president of the people. A working president."

The CNE said 46.1% of eligible voters took part, down from 80% in the 2015 presidential election. However that figure was disputed by the MUD opposition coalition, which put the turnout at 12% earlier in the day.

Images posted on social media showed many polling stations across the country remained empty as Venezuelans heeded a call by major opposition parties to boycott the vote.

"The process has been illegitimate since it was called but today its fraudulent nature has been ratified," MUD lawmaker Jose Manuel Olivares said on Twitter. "We made the right decision by deciding that Maduro [should be] alone in this farce."

The government's victory came despite one of Latin America's worst recessions in recent memory. Some 5,000 Venezuelans are leaving the oil-rich nation every day, according to the UN, as they flee from hyperinflation, severe product shortages and rampant crime.

The opposition, including Falcón and Bertucci, reported more than 350 electoral violations during the vote.

Among them was the placement of dozens of so-called puntos rojos - control points outside polling stations - where officials scanned the identity cards of welfare recipients. The government's promise of financial rewards or food rations for those who voted for Maduro was akin to manipulation, critics said.

"This violates the rules. It's shameless and seeks to gain an advantage," Falcón told reporters. "Buying votes by playing with the hunger of the people cannot be allowed."

Irregularities also included "abuses" of so-called assisted votes, in which officials accompany the elderly or those with disabilities to help them cast their ballots. According to opponents, the practice was adopted indiscriminately and without voter consent.

NEW SANCTIONS

The US, EU and a host of Latin American nations - including Brazil, Argentina and Mexico - also denounced the election as fixed in Maduro's favor.

US deputy secretary of state John Sullivan said a G20 meeting in Buenos Aires on Monday would discuss further sanctions against the OPEC country, including possible measures against its oil industry.

"We need to make sure we adhere to our goal which is to target corrupt regime officials and not the people of Venezuela," Sullivan told reporters on Sunday. "We don't want to damage the country in a way that makes it difficult to repair after democracy is restored.

"Oil sanctions would be a very significant step. They are under active review," he added.

Originally slated for December, the election was brought forward by the government in January, a move that critics said aimed to take advantage of a weak and fractured opposition.

Maduro's two strongest rivals, Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles, were ineligible to participate. López remains under house arrest on charges of inciting violence at opposition rallies while Capriles was barred for alleged misconduct when he was a state governor.

Many opposition supporters accuse Falcón and Bertucci of colluding with Maduro by running bogus campaigns. Both have repeatedly denied the claims.

'DICTATOR'

Maduro, who has been branded a "dictator" by the US state department, also drew international condemnation last year when he empowered a hand-picked constituent assembly to override the democratically elected legislature.

In addition to alleged electoral fraud, Maduro has been accused of orchestrating a sham crackdown on corruption to deflect blame for Venezuela's crisis and tighten his grip on power.

In recent months, police have arrested 11 executives of the country's largest bank Banesco and two employees of US oil major Chevron.

Those jailed as part of the purge also include former PDVSA chief executive Nelson Martínez and ex-oil minister Eulogio del Pino. Both were detained in November, just days after being replaced by army general and Maduro loyalist Manuel Quevedo, who has no previous energy industry experience.

Current or retired military officers now comprise almost half of Maduro's cabinet.

'LIKELY' DEFAULT

Analysts have predicted that Maduro will be powerless to save Venezuela's economy from further deterioration.

Oil production, which accounts for 95% of the country's export earnings, has fallen to less than 1.5Mb/d - its lowest level since the 1940s - amid endemic corruption, insufficient investments and an exodus of skilled workers.

Maduro blames the decline on "acts of sabotage" by political opponents and sanctions that have limited financing for state oil company PDVSA.

Dwindling oil revenue has left the government unable to service its external debt, which stands at about US$150bn, according to the Institute of International Finance.

Francisco Monaldi, a Venezuela expert at Rice University, told BNamericas this month that Maduro's re-election would make "full-blown default highly likely".

Crude production is set to decline by a further 250,000b/d-350,000b/d by December, according to Monaldi.

Another Latin America political analyst, Julia Buxton, said Maduro's election pointed to continued "catastrophic muddling ... further delaying the structural changes that have to come."

Buxton, a professor of comparative politics at the Central European University, predicted Venezuela would take decades to recover from the current crisis.