Venezuela\u2019s ruling party is celebrating what it has described as \u201can overwhelming victory\u201d in regional and parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the majority of opposition parties.<\/p>\n
The electoral council (CNE), which is dominated by government loyalists, says candidates for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela\u2019s (PSUV) \u2013 President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s party \u2013 won the race for governor in 23 out of the country\u2019s 24 states.<\/p>\n
According to the CNE, the ruling coalition also won 82.68% of the votes cast for the National Assembly, Venezuela\u2019s legislative body.<\/p>\n
The main opposition parties called the elections a \u201cfarce\u201d. Opposition leader, Mar\u00eda Corina Machado, said turnout had been below 15%.<\/p>\n
\u201cMore than 85% of Venezuelans did not obey this regime and said \u2018no\u2019,\u201d Machado said about those who abstained.<\/p>\n
Independent journalists who visited polling stations throughout the day said that they saw no queues and fewer people turning out than for the presidential election last July.<\/p>\n
The CNE meanwhile put the turn-out at 42.6%.<\/p>\n
The opposition has long questioned the independence of the CNE, which is led by Elvis Amoroso, a former legal counsel to President Maduro.<\/p>\n
The CNE came in for widespread international criticism in last year when it declared Mr Maduro the winner of the presidential election without ever providing the detailed voting tallies to back up their claim.<\/p>\n
Venezuela\u2019s opposition, meanwhile, published voting tallies it had gathered with the help of official election observers which showed that its candidate, Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez, was the overwhelming winner.<\/p>\n
Amid the wave of repression and arrests which followed the presidential election, Gonz\u00e1lez went into exile to Spain.<\/p>\n
Machado, who threw her weight behind presidential hopeful Edmundo Gonz\u00e1lez after she was barred from running for public office, remained in Venezuela.<\/p>\n
She was the main advocate for boycotting this Sunday\u2019s legislative and gubernatorial elections, saying that the result of July\u2019s presidential election should be respected before any new elections are held.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe voted on 28 July. On 25 May, we won\u2019t vote,\u201d she said in a video message shared earlier this month.<\/p>\n
However, a handful of opposition politicians did run for office, arguing that leaving the field open to government candidates was a mistake.<\/p>\n
Among them were former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales and Juan Requesens, who was jailed by the Maduro government for allegedly taking part in a 2018 drone attack on the president.<\/p>\n
Capriles told Spanish daily El Pa\u00eds that for him \u201cvoting in Venezuela is an expression of resistance, of resilience, of not giving up\u201d.<\/p>\n
Their decision to stand in the elections was criticised by those calling for a boycott, with Machado saying they had \u201cbetrayed the cause\u201d.<\/p>\n
With turnout low, President Maduro\u2019s PSUV party sailed to victory in 23 of the 24 gubernatorial races, up from the 20 governor posts it previously held.<\/p>\n
According to the preliminary results of the legislative election, the coalition backing President Maduro won an absolute majority of the 285 seats.<\/p>\n
But three politicians from Henrique Capriles\u2019 opposition UNT party were also voted into the National Assembly, including Capriles himself.<\/p>\n
Maduro has hailed the result as a \u201cvictory of peace and stability\u201d and celebrated the fact that his party had regained control of the states of Zulia and, in particular, Barinas, the home state of his predecessor in office and political mentor, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n
Only the state of Cojedes will now be in opposition hands, following the re-election of opposition candidate Alberto Gal\u00edndez.<\/p>\n
Sunday\u2019s vote was preceded by a wave of arrests, which saw more than 70 people with links to the opposition detained for allegedly \u201cplanning to sabotage the election\u201d.<\/p>\n
Among those detained is Juan Pablo Guanipa, 60, a close ally of Mar\u00eda Corina Machado. The interior minister accused him of being \u201cone of the leaders of this terrorist network\u201d which he claimed had been plotting to disrupt the election by planting bombs at key sites.<\/p>\n
Machado said his arrest and those of dozens of others was \u201cstate terrorism, pure and simple\u201d.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Venezuela\u2019s ruling party is celebrating what it has described as \u201can overwhelming victory\u201d in regional and parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the majority of opposition parties. The electoral council (CNE), which is dominated by government loyalists, says candidates for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela\u2019s (PSUV) \u2013 President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u2019s party \u2013 won the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115601\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}