CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela’s leftist leader Nicolas Maduro won a new six-year term on Sunday, but his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship.

Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector.

Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his closest challenger Henri Falcon, a former governor who broke with an opposition boycott to stand.

“They underestimated me,” Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd.

Turnout at the election was just 46.1 percent, the election board said, way down from the 80 percent registered at the last presidential vote in 2013. The opposition said that figure was inflated, putting participation at nearer 30 percent.

An electoral board source told Reuters 32.3 percent of eligible voters cast ballots by 6 p.m. (2200 GMT) as most polls shut.

“The process undoubtedly lacks legitimacy and as such we do not recognize it,” said Falcon, a 56-year-old former state governor, looking downcast.

Maduro had welcomed Falcon’s candidacy, which gave some legitimacy to a process critics at home and around the world had condemned in advance as the “coronation” of a dictator.

Falcon’s quick rejection of Sunday’s election, and call for a new vote, was therefore a blow to the government’s strategy.

Falcon, a former member of the Socialist Party who went over to the opposition in 2010, said he was outraged at the government’s placing of nearly 13,000 pro-government stands called “red spots” close to polling stations nationwide.

Mainly poor Venezuelans were asked to scan state-issued “fatherland cards” at red tents after voting in hope of receiving a “prize” promised by Maduro, which opponents said was akin to vote-buying.

The “fatherland cards” are required to receive benefits including food boxes and money transfers.

A third presidential candidate, evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci, followed Falcon in slamming irregularities during Sunday’s vote and calling for a new election.

Despite his unpopularity over a national economic meltdown, Maduro benefited on Sunday not just from the opposition boycott but also from a ban on his two most popular rivals and the liberal use of state resources in his campaign.

His tally, however, fell short of the 10 million votes he had said throughout the campaign he wanted to win.

(Graphic on Venezeula election, tmsnrt.rs/2LbYgAC)

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro is surrounded by supporters as he speaks during a gathering after the results of the election were released, outside of the Miraflores Palace in Caracas, Venezuela, May 20, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlins

FIGHTING “IMPERIALISM”

Maduro, the self-described “son” of Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.

Attendance appeared thin in many polling stations visited by Reuters reporters, from wealthy east Caracas to the Andean mountains near Colombia. There were lines, however, at poorer government strongholds, where the majority of voters interviewed said they were backing Maduro.

“I’m hungry and don’t have a job, but I’m sticking to Maduro,” said Carlos Rincones, 49, in the once-thriving industrial city of Valencia, accusing right-wing business owners of purposefully hiding food and hiking prices.

Many Venezuelans are disillusioned and angry over the election: they criticize Maduro for economic hardships and the opposition for its dysfunctional splits.

Reeling from a fifth year of recession, falling oil production and U.S. sanctions, Venezuela is seeing growing levels of malnutrition and hyperinflation, and mass emigration.

Venezuelan migrants staged small anti-Maduro protests in cities from Madrid to Miami. In the highland city of San Cristobal near Colombia, three cloth dolls representing widely loathed officials - Electoral Council head Tibisay Lucena, Socialist Party No. 2 Diosdado Cabello and Vice President Tareck El Aissami - were hung from a footbridge.

But streets were calm, with children playing soccer on one road in San Cristobal blocked off at past elections to accommodate long voter lines. For many Venezuelans, Sunday was a day to look for scant food or stock up on water, which is increasingly running short because of years of underinvestment.

“I’m not voting - what’s the point if we already know the result? I prefer to come here to get water rather than waste my time,” said Raul Sanchez, filling a jug from a tap by a busy road in the arid northwestern city of Punto Fijo because his community has not had running water for 26 days.

With the election behind him, Maduro may choose to deepen a purge of critics within the ruling “Chavismo” movement.

He faces a Herculean task to turn around the moribund economy, with the bolivar currency down 99 percent in the past year and inflation at an annual 14,000 percent, according to the National Assembly.

Slideshow (32 Images)

(Graphic on Latin American elections, tmsnrt.rs/2rAQ4l1)

(Reuters Venezuela election coverage on Twitter @ReutersVzla)</s>Venezuela's pro-government electoral council declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of Sunday's election after a vote condemned internationally as the fortification of a dictatorship.

This oil-producing nation is facing a near-total societal collapse because of mismanagement, corruption and a crumbling socialist system, fueling widespread hunger and medical shortages that have sparked the largest migrant crisis in modern South American history. Traditional opposition parties were barred from fielding candidates, and had called for a broad boycott of Sunday's vote amid fears that Maduro is moving to cement dictatorial power.

"How much have they underestimated our revolutionary people, and how much have they underestimated me," Maduro told a late night crowd in front of the president palace. "And here we are, victorious."

The government announced a 46 percent turnout - the lowest for a presidential election here since the 1940s. With near-empty polling stations across Venezuela, the opposition coalition, known as the Broad Front, claimed that only about 30 percent of voters had cast ballots.

"We asked the people to not participate and they listened," said Juan Pablo Guanipa, an opposition politician.

The electoral commission said that with 92 percent of the vote counted, Maduro - the anointed successor of the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chávez, who died in 2013 - had won a second six-year term, with 67.7 percent of the vote. His closest challenger - Henri Falcón, a former governor who broke with Chavez in 2010 - said he would not recognize the result, and called for a new election.

Maduro's challengers in the race, as well as the opposition coalition that called for the boycott, decried systematic election violations. Falcón said that his election monitors had been barred from observing at many polling stations, and that the government had dolled out bonuses to Maduro voters.

The coalition said the government had used state-owned buses to bring in supporters at 78 percent of polling stations. Opponents also charged that government benefit registries were located illegally close at most polling places, suggesting a tit-for-tat relationship between votes for Maduro and access to state food aid.

On Sunday, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan said Washington would not recognize the results and was considering additional sanctions, including an oil embargo. But he also expressed caution about such a step, which could have dire humanitarian consequences on the ground.

"We don't want to damage the country in a way that makes it difficult to repair after democracy is restored," Sullivan told reporters.

In a defiant rebuttal, Maduro responded at a televised news conference by saying the United States was "desperate given high participation levels" in the election. "Each vote is a response to the North, which thinks it owns us," he said.

Maduro had faced two main opponents - Falcón and Javier Bertucci, an evangelical preacher. Ahead of the vote, some polls showed Maduro and Falcón, who broke with then-President Chávez in 2010, running almost neck and neck. The election commission, controlled by Maduro supporters, reported Falcón had received 21 percent of the vote, and Bertucci 11.6 percent.

Critics say the government has committed fraud to win the last three elections and had predicted that the incumbent would ensure his victory. On Sunday, both Falcón and Bertucci denounced voting irregularities, arguing the government had doled out food and money in exchange for votes.

"We've received reports of voter intimidation, voters being asked who they're going to vote for and being offered money and food," Bertucci said. "This is not a democratic act. . . . There can't be freedom if they buy out hungry people."

Although Falcón said late Sunday that he would not recognize the result, he appeared to back away from calls for civil disobedience or military intervention. Analysts suggested that he may be attempting to forge a more passive opposition movement that could be potentially be more acceptable to the government.

"The exit from this crisis has to be constitutional and electoral," he said.

Opposition voters struggled with whether to honor the boycott. In eastern Caracas, Maria Diaz, a 30-year-old accountant whose infant child died in a public hospital last month due to a lack of medicines, said she voted for Falcón "because I don't think you win anything by abstaining."

"Look, the country's situation, especially food and medicine, is really bad," she said. "We need change."

Those boycotting the election spoke of colliding emotions - anger at the government, disappointment with the divided opposition and frustration that exhausted Venezuelans were not taking to the streets.

"I am not going to vote. For what?" said Freddy Álvarez, a 43-year-old merchant arguing with his friend about the elections at a bakery in western Caracas.

As recently as last year, tens of thousands of Venezuelans joined anti-government protests, but the marches have largely died out.

"To see a change here, people need to take to the streets again," Álvarez said. "We will not overthrow Maduro with votes. I do not understand why people are so apathetic."

A salsa-loving former bus driver and union leader, Maduro, 55, has sought victory by offering food at rallies and railing against "el Imperio" - the Empire, as he often dubs the United States. On Sunday, pro-government vans with loudspeakers roamed the streets, evoking the name of Chávez and urging Maduro supporters to turn out.

"Let's vote! Let's defend President Chávez's legacy! Don't stay at home!" said a voice from one of the vans.

Some analysts, however, say that Maduro could have won without rigging the vote, in part because his government has created an uneven playing field. Many Venezuelans said they feared losing government jobs or benefits - particularly subsidized government food baskets known as CLAP boxes. Government officials set up registration booths for benefits next to - sometimes inside - polling stations.

"I already voted, and I'm now going to register for benefits, because that's what they're telling us to do," said Andrea Hernandez, a 19-year-old holding her 3-month-old daughter. "The bonuses, the CLAP boxes. If I don't vote for the government, they might stop giving me these benefits."

State TV showed Maduro walking alongside other government officials as he cast his vote.

"We are an example of democracy to the whole world," Maduro tweeted.</s>Venezuela and amp;rsquo;s incumbent president Nicolás Maduro is set to secure another six-year term, despite the country and amp;rsquo;s spiraling economic and humanitarian crisis.</s>Nicolas Maduro has been re- elected as the President of Venezuela and has won a new six-year term on Sunday, on the other hand his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship. Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a…

Nicolas Maduro has been re- elected as the President of Venezuela and has won a new six-year term on Sunday, on the other hand his main rivals disavowed the election alleging massive irregularities in a process critics decried as a farce propping up a dictatorship.

Victory for the 55-year-old former bus driver, who replaced Hugo Chavez after his death from cancer in 2013, may trigger a new round of western sanctions against the socialist government as it grapples with a ruinous economic crisis.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration is threatening moves against Venezuela’s already reeling oil sector.

Venezuela’s election board, run by Maduro loyalists, said he took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his closest challenger Henri Falcon, a former governor who broke with an opposition boycott to stand.

“They underestimated me,” Mr. Maduro told cheering supporters on a stage outside his Miraflores presidential palace in downtown Caracas as fireworks sounded and confetti fell on the crowd.</s>Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro comfortably won re-election in a controversial vote on Sunday, the election board said, though his main rivals both declared the poll illegitimate due to alleged widespread irregularities.

Turnout at the election was just 46.1 percent, the election board said, way down from the 80 percent registered at the last presidential vote in 2013, due to a boycott by Venezuela's mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighborhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace. He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said.</s>Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro has shrugged off international condemnation and allegations of vote buying and electoral fraud to claim a second six-year term at the helm of his crisis-stricken nation.

Addressing crowds of supporters outside the presidential palace in Caracas on Sunday night, Maduro hailed the “impeccable electoral process” that had returned him to power with 67.7% of the vote. 



“This was a historic day! The day of a heroic victory! The day of a beautiful victory - of a truly popular victory,” Maduro shouted.

“The whole of Venezuela has triumphed! Democracy has triumphed! Peace has triumphed! Constitutionality has triumphed [These were] elections that were constitutional, legitimate and legal ... We have a president of the people! A working president!”



Venezuela’s election board put turnout at just 46.1%, way down from the 80% registered at the last presidential vote in 2013, due to a boycott by Venezuela’s mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighbourhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace.

He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said.</s>Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro looked set to secure a second six-year term on Sunday despite leading his oil-rich nation into a shattering economic depression that has prompted one of the worst migration crises in recent Latin American history.



South America’s fifth most populous nation is racked with hyperinflation, crime and chronic shortages of food and medicine while critics accuse Maduro of turning a once vibrant democracy into an increasingly dictatorial state. 



But as he cast his vote in the capital, Caracas, at 6am local time Maduro claimed that a veritable democratic “fiesta” was under way. 



“Today is a historic day that no-one will forget,” the 55-year-old former bus driver and foreign minister told Telesur, Venezuela’s state-run broadcaster. “It’s a day of celebration … We are celebrating the freedom … that we enjoy in this country … of opinion, of action, of mobilization, of thought – and the freedom to choose.”

Maduro loyalists parroted that message as they headed out to vote for the man who inherited Hugo Chávez’s ‘Bolivarian revolution’ after his death in 2013. “Look at the people in the streets!” Delcy Rodríguez, the president of Maduro’s widely reviled constituent assembly, declared. “A big democratic fiesta is taking place in Venezuela.”

Critics ridiculed those claims, denouncing the vote, which Venezuela’s mainstream opposition is boycotting and the United States has called a sham, as a “mojiganga” (farce). “These are not elections. They are a farce intended to keep Maduro in power without popular support,” Juan Pablo Guanipa, a prominent opposition leader, told Reuters. 



Amid reports that polling centres had failed to open in some opposition areas and of eerily quiet streets, Maduro’s main opponent, Henri Falcón, issued a final plea for voters to exercise their democratic right. “The day has come to make history and to save Venezuela,” he tweeted.

That looks unlikely, with experts predicting the lowest voter turnout since Chávez was first elected in 1998 will help return Maduro to power despite the social, political and economic turmoil gripping his country. 



In a televised address on the eve of Sunday’s vote, Maduro rejected claims Venezuela was “in ruins” as an imperialist smear campaign designed to topple his government. 



“[Instead of attacking Venezuela] why don’t they deal with the humanitarian crisis in Africa: the unemployment, the hunger, the poverty, the lack of education and services?” he asked. “Why don’t they deal with the killing and the crisis in Gaza and the murders of dozens of men and women who are fighting for their land in Palestine?”</s>CARACAS: President Nicolas Maduro was unsurprisingly declared winner of Venezuela’s election on Sunday (Monday in Manila) in a poll rejected as invalid by his rivals, who immediately called for fresh elections to be held later this year.

Reeling under a devastating economic crisis, only 46 percent of voters turned out to cast ballots in an election boycotted by the opposition and condemned by much of the international community, but one that hands Maduro a second term until 2025.

“We do not recognize this electoral process as valid, as true,” his main rival Henri Falcon told a news conference, even before the result was announced.

“For us, there were no elections. We have to have new elections in Venezuela.”

Maduro hailed his victory for another six-year term as a “historic record” in a speech to thousands of cheering supporters outside the official Miraflores Palace in Caracas.

“Never before has a presidential candidate taken 68 percent of the popular vote,” he said, to applause.

“We won again! We triumphed again! We are the force of history turned into a permanent popular victory,” said Maduro.

The official result gave Maduro 67.7 percent of the vote, with Falcon a distant second at 21.2 percent. In the last opinion polls before the vote, the pair were running neck-and-neck.

Third-placed Javier Bertucci, an evangelist preacher who polled around 11 percent, joined in the call for new elections.

Maduro, the political heir to the late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, has presided over an implosion of the once wealthy oil producer’s economy since taking office in 2013.

Hyperinflation, food and medicine shortages, rising crime and broken water, power and transportation networks have sparked violent unrest, and left Maduro with a 75 percent disapproval rating.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have fled the South American country in a mass exodus in recent years.

Wearing a bright red shirt that identifies him as a “Chavista,” the president arrived early at a Caracas polling station along with his wife, former prosecutor Cilia Flores.

“Your vote decides: ballots or bullets, motherland or colony, peace or violence, independence or subordination,” said the 55-year-old former bus driver and union leader.

The comments reflected previous ones by the socialist leader that Venezuela is the victim of an “economic war” waged by the conservative opposition and outside powers such as the United States aimed at toppling him.

As the polls opened, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo denounced the “sham” election.

Small queues of voters, mostly Maduro supporters, formed at some polling stations, but others appeared half empty, Agence France-Presse correspondents reported from several cities.

Falcon, a 56-year-old former army officer who failed to gain the endorsement of the main opposition, accused the government of coercing voters.

In a news conference held before the official result announcement, he pointed particularly to so-called “red points”—street stalls set up by the ruling Socialists near polling stations—allegedly to offer handouts in exchange for votes.

The former governor of Venezuela’s Lara state also said polling centers had remained open after the scheduled closing time, and that his monitors were expelled from some of them.

Hundreds of Venezuelans took to the streets in several Latin American capitals, including Bogota, Buenos Aires and Lima—as well as in Madrid—to denounce the vote.

The biggest protest was in Chile’s capital Santiago, where more than 1,000 demonstrated against the election. Chile granted 73,000 visas to Venezuelans fleeing the country last year.

The Chilean government rejected a result that “lacks all legitimacy and does not meet any of the minimum and necessary requirements to be a democratic and transparent election, in accordance with international standards.”

Aware of the popular mood, Maduro had vowed an “economic revolution” if reelected.

Falcon promised to dollarize the economy, return companies expropriated by Chavez and allow humanitarian aid, something the president rejects.

Falcon said fresh elections could be held in November or December, when they are traditionally contested, but they were moved up this year by the country’s all-powerful and pro-government Constituent Assembly, catching the divided and weakened opposition off-guard.

The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) opposition coalition has won support from the United States, the European Union and 14 countries of the Lima Group who called for the vote to be postponed.

Maduro is accused of undermining democracy, usurping the power of the opposition-dominated legislature by replacing it with his Constituent Assembly and cracking down hard on the opposition. Protests in 2017, still fresh in the collective memory, left around 125 people dead.

The MUD’s most popular leaders have been sidelined or detained, the boycott their only remaining weapon.

Despite holding the world’s largest oil reserves, the country faces ruin, with the IMF citing a 45 percent drop in GDP under Maduro.

The crippled oil industry lacks investment and its assets are increasingly prey to debt settlements as the country defaults.</s>CARACAS/BARQUISIMETO - Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro comfortably won re-election in a controversial vote on Sunday, the election board said, though his main rivals both declared the poll illegitimate due to alleged widespread irregularities.

Turnout at the election was just 46.1%, the election board said, way down from the 80% registered at the last presidential vote in 2013, due to a boycott by Venezuela’s mainstream opposition.

As results came out, Maduro supporters let off fireworks in poor Caracas neighborhoods and danced to Latin pop around the downtown Miraflores presidential palace. He took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 for his nearest rival Henri Falcon, the board said.

Despite his unpopularity over the OPEC member’s economic meltdown, the 55-year-old former bus driver was benefiting from a boycott by the mainstream opposition, a ban on his two most popular rivals, and state institutions in loyalists’ hands.

The vote could trigger additional sanctions from the United States and more censure from the European Union and Latin America. The Trump administration said it would not recognise the “sham” election and was considering oil sanctions.

Maduro, the self-described “son” of former President Hugo Chavez, says he is battling an “imperialist” plot to crush socialism and take over Venezuela’s oil. Opponents say he has destroyed a once-wealthy economy and ruthlessly crushed dissent.</s>The turnout at the Venezuelan presidential election amounted to 46,01%, the official data revealed.

Venezuela held the presidential election on Sunday. This year four candidates ran for the presidency: incumbent President Nicolas Maduro, Reinaldo Quijada, who supported Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez but is dissatisfied with the current government, opposition leader Falcon and Evangelical pastor Javier Bertucci.

Henri Falcon has announced earlier in the day that ha does not recognize results of the presidential election due to alleged mass electoral violations.
Incumbent President Nicolás Maduro wins the presidential election amidst allegations of massive irregularities by his main rivals.