Hundreds of young people marched through the streets of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, yesterday, furious over a presidential election in which the incumbent, President Nicolás Maduro, declared victory despite widespread accusations of fraud.
With results from 80 percent of voting stations counted, Venezuela’s election authority claimed that Maduro, the country’s authoritarian leader, had received 51.2 percent of the vote on Sunday, with the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González, getting 44.2 percent. Those results did not appear to match statistical estimates based on partial counts and other data that showed the president losing by a wide margin.
Maduro’s government has invented election results before, and the vote was riddled with irregularities. Some officials refused to release printouts verifying the electronic vote count, leaving the country without a way to confirm the result announced by the ruling party.
Reactions: The U.S. and countries around the world denounced the official results. By yesterday afternoon, the Venezuelan government announced that it had kicked out the diplomatic missions of seven Latin American countries that had joined the condemnation.
