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VENEZUELA’S ACTING PRESIDENT Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of the election to succeed his late mentor Hugo Chavez by a razor-thin margin late on Sunday, but his rival refused to concede defeat.
The contested result plunged the deeply divided oil-rich South American country into uncertainty, with the heir of Chavez’s socialist revolution declaring victory and opposition leader Henrique Capriles demanding a recount.
Fireworks erupted after the National Electoral Council announced that near complete results showed Maduro had won with just 50.66 per cent of the vote compared to 49.1 per cent for Capriles — a difference of less than 300,000 votes.
“This victory is another tribute to our comandante Hugo Chavez,” the 50-year-old Maduro said in front of cheering supporters at the Miraflores presidential palace.
“Today we can say that we had a fair electoral triumph,” he added, saying he was open to an audit of the close vote tally.
Maduro said he spoke with Capriles by telephone and that he told his rival he must recognise the outcome of the election. Both candidates had pledged during the campaign to accept the results.
But Capriles – who had accepted defeat when Chavez beat him by 11 points in October polls – held up a list of some 3,200 “incidents” that took place during the vote.
“Today’s loser is you,” he told a news conference, referring to Maduro, adding: “We won’t recognise a result until every vote has been counted.”
Hours earlier, the 40-year-old opposition leader charged that there were attempts to let people vote after polling stations closed. He had also accused the government of pressuring civil servants to vote for Maduro.
But National Electoral Council president Tibisay Lucena said the results were “irreversible” after 99 per cent of electronic votes were counted, with 78 per cent turnout.
Named by Chavez as his political heir, Maduro rode a wave of grief for the late leader, who ruled Venezuela for 14 years with a socialist revolution that made him popular among the poor while disenchanting others fed up with the weak economy.
Opinion polls had given Maduro leads of 10 to 20 points during the campaign, but Capriles energised the opposition in his second shot at the presidency.
Maduro has vowed to continue the oil-funded policies that cut poverty by almost half to 29 per cent through popular health, education and food programs.
But Chavez left behind a litany of problems: South America’s highest murder rate, with 16,000 people killed last year, chronic food shortages, high inflation and recurring power outages.
Celebrations
Government supporters celebrate after the official results of the presidential election were announced (AP Photo/Ariana Cubillos)
Hundreds of Chavistas began to celebrate in front of the presidential palace well before the results were announced, launching fireworks, dancing and holding pictures of Maduro and Chavez.
“This is a very important victory for the future of the country. This is the legacy of our comandante, who is no longer here. But he left us Maduro and he will defend his project,” said Rafael Perez Camarero, 29.
Capriles had graciously accepted his defeat when Chavez beat him in October polls that marked the opposition’s best showing against the late leader. Sunday’s result against Chavez’s handpicked heir was far closer.
Maduro inherited Chavez’s formidable electoral machinery, which helped the late leader win successive elections in 14 years, with government employees often seen handing campaign pamphlets and attending rallies in groups.
In the capital’s Plaza Bolivar, a historic square known as a gathering point for Chavistas, Maduro supporters chanted “Chavez, we obeyed, we won and we continue!” and “Chavez lives, the struggle goes on!”
After voting in Caracas earlier in the day, Maduro warned there would be no dialogue with the “bourgeoisie” – his term for the opposition – and took a shot at the United States, saying he would present evidence of US interventionism on Monday.
His candidacy was backed by Chavez’s leftist allies in the region, especially communist Cuba, whose anemic economy has been kept afloat by generous oil shipments from a nation sitting on the world’s biggest crude reserves.
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She had A Brief History of Crime.
Great stuff. I thought the commenting folk would struggle for a good pun on this story.
Remember, as long as the victim is a male this stuff is all fine.
“…as long as the victim is male, this stuff is all (considered) fine (by other men).”
I fixed it for you. Have another look at the comments, it’s lads making light of this. Don’t go throwing a “waaaah..society doesn’t care about male victims” when it’s us men who mock male victims of CSA and DV.
Call it out when you see it from other guys, just like I’m doing now. If your friends make comments about boys abused by teachers, saying stuff like “I wish I’d had a teacher like that when I was in school” or “what’s he complaining about? He must be gay.” (all comments I’ve seen from lads on articles concerning male victims of sexually abusive teachers).
Or call it out when they say stuff like “If that’d been me it’d be a totally different story”, or “Jaysus, why didn’t he just act a man and stand up for himself” when talking about male victims of domestic violence.
We really are our own worst enemies.
No communication for the next 8 months???? But then she’s fine to go again… Huh
She’s been pursuing him throughout the world! She’s a very dangerous person and should have been locked up!
She’ll say a good confession and it’ll be alright.
Funny how religious nutbags have no problem killing/threatening to kill people they deem haven’t followed the teachings of their religion. The irony is baffling.
It is the Almighty’s will for us to murder each other
“Women. They are a complete mystery.” Stephen Hawking.
Stephen Hawking is not afraid to say it as it is and leave God out of his equations and that seems to rattle certain mindset groupings.
Say it as it is indeed, you mean the guy who is babbling on about the effects of carbon dioxide and global catastrophe while advertising 2L Jaguar cars. They are little more than voodoo merchants who have carved out a nice living for themselves with a take-my-word-for-it nonsense for those who know no better.
I threaten to kill the kids several times a week. Where are my handcuffs? I need a rest!
Feeble minded people are everywhere.
Low IQ people used to threaten Einstein also.
They used to think that having high mental abilities means you the work of the Devil himself.
In the Middle Ages Hawking would have been burned alive as an agent of Satan.
P.S.
“The Devil plays all the best tunes” means that the stuffy Vatican people are jealous of us party-loving Irish musical pagans.
Where do you get this rubbish from Pat, the objections of the Pope at the time of Galileo in respect to the method of approach to heliocentricity was well founded as the astronomical facility which predicts astronomical events such as eclipses and transits cannot be used to prove that the Earth orbits the Sun while turning as it does so. It can only really be resolved with 21st century imaging but was just beyond the reach of the original heliocentric astronomers such as Copernicus,Kepler and Galileo. It takes nothing away from what Copernicus did however the specific technical objections of the Pope remain valid as it is impossible to account for the observed motions of the inner planets using the framework Copernicus and Kepler used.
turns out copernicus and kepler were well ahead of their time.
This IQ business is a fable, we are all gifted with the same intelligence but people tend to be cunning, creative or productive in some measure. Newton was the Boris Johnson of astronomy, full of bluster and bravado but no depth nor substance to his agenda and his followers like Hawking exploit the eccentric jargon for lifestyles and reputations and no real concern for the discipline they disrupt and destroy.
“The demonstrations throughout the book [ Newton's Principia] are geometrical,
but to readers of ordinary ability are rendered unnecessarily
difficult by the absence of illustrations and explanations, and by the
fact that no clue is given to the method by which Newton arrived at
his results.” Rouse Ball 1908
Hawking is merely another clone in a succession of many and good luck to him, after all, there always has to be a living icon to keep the lifestyles and reputations of people who never left the classrooms of schools ad colleges going and great work if you can get it. The price is that productive astronomy lays in ruins for the indulgences of experimental theorists with their voodoo and bluffing.
Are you a religious man Gerald?
I’ll tell you what I am not there Andy, I am not a follower of nonsensical academic jargon that mocks human intelligence but is force fed through the schools and classrooms as high intelligence. It is not a question of intelligence but rather curiosity , in this case – how the f@ck did a society get to believe it could control the planet’s temperature by scaling up the conditions in a common greenhouse to the planet itself. Boris Johnson had nothing on Newton, he could project authority while not actually knowing where he was going with his notions -
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.” Newton
If people can’t figure that statement out then they get what they deserve.
Fair enough, but do you believe in God and the bible and what not?
Do you believe in the laws of motions/physics,gravity and what not ?. It all boils down to that ‘method’ which began its existence as a rule but is now known as the ‘scientific method’. Maybe the English are given to following the dictates of eccentric toffs like Johnson and Newton but that is all it is, pure bluff and bluster passed off as high intelligence.
Are you having trouble answering that question? A simple yes or no there Gerald!!
Did you seriously just dismiss Newton as just an eccentric toff?? Great trolling..
Silly man, I just allowed people to make up their own minds based on a statement as to whether you can scale up an observation at a human level to large scale observations such as astronomy or terrestrial sciences. An eccentric toff might therefore say that the fall of an apple and the planet’s motion around the Sun is the same thing or a greenhouse is the same as the planet Earth but the entire agenda now called the ‘scientific method’ is a bad joke . Read it again and if you can’t understand it you hardly are going to be able to know exactly what Sir Isaac tried to so -
“Rule III. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither [intensification] nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.” Newton
Nothing worse than an Irish Royal Society apologist.
Annie Wilkes?
Oops wrong stephen I read it as Stephen King
Take her passpprt at the very least, no? Sheesh!
Say they’re ramping up the pressure for police to roll on and make an arrest. Watching her like a hawk for sure.
Who wants to see her face? I have her nudes too
She was not a religious nutjob. She was a wiccan
@ IBenn $#%: I thought wicca was for basket cases!
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