Maduro has 16% lead according to final survey of the Polls

by Turing Fri Apr 12, 2013 14:01

Millions of people turned out for the closing election rally of the Bolivarian candidate filling 7 huge avenues in the centre of Caracas ahead of Sunday's presidential election. Here's a pìcture gallery from the "Hugo Chávez" Campaign Commando.

More images at link.

by Turing Mon Apr 15, 2013 13:17

Maduro has won but already attempts are being made to question the result. Possibly the opening move in a coup attempt. Full text at link.

As we reported earlier today, Nicolas Maduro has been elected President of Venezuela. Maduro won by 1.6%, a 235,000 vote lead over Henrique Capriles of the right-wing M.U.D alliance. However despite all the endorsements of Venezuela’s robust and independent electoral system, and in the face of a third electoral defeat in three months, Capriles right-wing coalition has resorted to the old tricks of rejecting the elections results and disregarding the will of the people in an orchestrated attempt to discredit the outcome and to seek to isolate Venezuela internationally.

Commenting on the situation, former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said, “Although Nicolas Maduro’s margin of victory was narrower than polls predicted, the opposition parties in Venezuela and governments around the world should accept the results and not seek to undermine the democratic will of the majority of Venezuelan voters. They may not like the result, but it is totally clear from the 17 elections held over the past 14 years that Venezuela has a free and fair democracy and the election result represents the will of the people. Indeed, according to former US President Jimmy Carter, whose ‘Carter Centre’ monitor elections in many nations, Venezuela’s rigorous election process is the ‘best in the world’.”

Len McCluskey, recently re-elected General Secretary of Unite the Union added, “Once again Venezuela has shown why former US president Jimmy Carter has said it has the best election process in the world. There should be no support from our government to those extremist movements in Venezuela calling for the results to be rejected. Those people refusing to accept the views of the Venezuelan majority today are the very same people who backed the coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002. They are certainly not democrats and seem to pick and choose which election results they recognise."