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The coalition led by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has regained control of the country’s parliament by winning the legislative elections that took place on Sunday amid a boycott of the main opposition parties with little participation.
The alliance in support of Maduro obtained 67.7 percent of the 5.2 million votes, the president of the National Electoral Council, Indira Alfonzo, announced on Monday.
He explained that a small portion of the opposition participated in the elections, which obtained 18% of the votes. The opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who considered Maduro’s authority illegal, called for a boycott of these elections.
Alfonzo did not specify the distribution of the 277 seats for which 20 million registered voters were supposed to vote.
But the abstention rate reached 69%, while the call of the main opposition parties to “stay home” was widely accepted.
Guaidó, who declared himself interim president and has the support of more than fifty countries led by the United States, said: “The rejection of the majority of the Venezuelan people was clear … Venezuela turned its back on Maduro and his corruption.”
In the 2015 legislative elections, when the opposition ended 15 years of rule by the Chavinist party named after the late Socialist President Hugo Chávez in Parliament, the participation rate in the vote reached 71%, compared to 66, 45% of 2010.
On Sunday, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo described the legislative elections in Venezuela as a “farce” and added that “the results announced by the illegal regime of Nicolás Maduro will not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people.”
In response to Pompeo’s remarks, his Venezuelan counterpart, Jorge Arias, described the United States as a “zombie.”
Source: Sites
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