Incumbent Nicolas Maduro has been declared the winner of Sunday’s presidential election in Venezuela, but the opposition said they were preparing to dispute the results.
Elvis Amoroso, president of the CNE electoral authority, said Maduro secured a third six-year term with 51.2 percent of the vote. Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who had been leading in opinion polls, got 44.2 percent, he said.
The electoral did not immediately release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling stations nationwide.
According to Al Jazeera, opposition representatives said earlier that tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the centres had shown Gonzalez trouncing Maduro.
In comments shortly after the announcement, Maduro said his re-election was a triumph of peace and stability and reiterated his campaign trail claims that the voting system was transparent.
Maduro, 61, first won power in 2013 after his mentor, socialist President Hugo Chavez, died from cancer.
