Nicolas Maduro: "We must respect the referee and nobody should try to spoil this beautiful day."

After being announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE) as the winner of the presidential elections in Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro called for respect for the official results in the face of accusations of fraud by the opposition.

“We must respect this Constitution. We must respect the referee and nobody should try to tarnish this beautiful day that the people of Venezuela had,” Maduro said in a speech to his supporters gathered at the Miraflores Palace.

“I am a man of peace and dialogue,” he added.

Maduro assured that he will work to implement the changes that Venezuela requires.

“In this new mandate that you have given me, that you have given yourselves, I swear to you that I will give my entire life to carry out all the changes and transformations that our country needs. to move towards a destiny of prosperity, growth, peace, social happiness, to rescue all the rights violated by the economic war, by imperialist missiles,” he said.

According to the official results announced by the president of the CNE, Elvis Amoroso, after 80% of the tables had been counted, there was already a “convincing and irreversible” trend that gave Maduro 51.20% support (5,150,092 votes), compared to 44.2% (4,445,978 votes) obtained by the candidate of the opposition Unitary Platform, Edmundo González Urrutia.

These official results, however, were rejected by opposition leader María Corina Machado, who claimed that González Urrutia won with 70% of the votes.

“There is a new president-elect and it is Edmundo González,” Machado said.

“This is not fraud, it is ignoring and violating popular sovereignty“There’s no way they can justify that. Not with the information we have,” he added.

Machado said the opposition had been monitoring the process throughout the day and that the results he referred to were supported by exit polls and independent quick counts, as well as by all the minutes transmitted by the CNE.

The governments of Chile, Peru and Costa Rica questioned the announced results.

“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it publishes are difficult to believe. The international community and above all the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the minutes and the process, and that international observers not beholden to the government account for the veracity of the results,” said Chilean President Gabriel Boric.

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