CARACAS, April 15 – Venezuela’s opposition leader Henrique Capriles said early Monday that he refused to accept the election results and demanded recount of all votes after Acting President Nicolas Maduro narrowly won Sunday’s vote.
“I do not compromise with lies and corruption,” Capriles told a press conference, adding that the opposition will not recognize the results “until all votes are counted.”
According to the National Electoral Council, Maduro defeated Capriles, who represents the Democratic Unity Roundtable coalition by a margin of less than 2 percentage points, or about 235,000 votes.
Maduro’s stunningly close victory came after a campaign in which the winner promised to carry on Chavez’s self proclaimed socialist revolution while Capriles’ main message was that Chavez’s 14-year regime put Venezuela on the
road to ruin.
Maduro, acting president since Chavez’s death, held a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he got just 50.7 percent of the votes to 49.1 percent for Capriles with nearly all ballots counted.
In a victory speech, Maduro told a crowd outside the presidential palace that his victory was further proof that Chavez “continues to be invincible, that he continues to win battles.”
At Capriles’ campaign headquarters, people hung their heads quietly as the results were announced by an electoral council stacked with government loyalists. Many started crying; others just stared at TV screens in disbelief.
But Capriles emerged later to angrily reject the official vote totals.
“It is the government that has been defeated,” he said.
Capriles said at his campaign’s headquarters that his campaign’s tally of votes came up with “a result that is different from the results announced today.”
“The biggest loser today is you,” he said, directly addressing Maduro through the camera. “The people don’t love you.”
Maduro said during his speech that Capriles had called him before the results were announced to suggest a “pact” and that Maduro refused.
There was no comment from Capriles’ camp on Maduro’s claim.
Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, rode a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader to victory, pinning his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and the powerful state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
Capriles’ main campaign weapon was to simply emphasize “the incompetence of the state” in handling the world’s largest oil reserves. Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe his government not only squandered, but plundered, much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his tenure.
Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime — one of the world’s highest homicide and kidnapping rates — that the opposition said worsened after Chavez succumbed March 5 to cancer.
In a hint of discontent within Chavista ranks, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who many consider Maduro’s main rival, expressed dismay at the tight outcome.
He tweeted: “The results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism. It’s contradictory that the poor sectors of the population vote for their longtime exploiters.”
Turnout was 78 percent, down from just over 80 percent in the October election that Chavez won by a nearly 11-point margin. The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed the backing of state media as part of its near-monopoly on institutional power.
Capriles’ camp said Chavista loyalists in the judiciary put them at glaring disadvantage by slapping the campaign and broadcast media with fines and prosecutions that they called unwarranted. Only one opposition TV station remains and it was being sold to a new owner Monday.
At his campaign rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves.
Capriles, 40, showed Maduro none of the respect he earlier accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles’ backers “heirs of Hitler.”
It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.
The opposition contended Chavez looted the treasury last year to buy his re-election with government handouts. It also complained about the steady flow of cut-rate oil to Cuba, which Capriles said would end if he won. Venezuela’s $30 billion fiscal deficit is equal to about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver with close ties to Cuba’s leaders, constantly alleged that Capriles was conspiring with U.S. putschists to destabilize Venezuela and even suggested Washington had infected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.
In his victory speech, he said he would be presenting on Monday nine men arrested in an alleged sabotage plot He focused his campaign message on his mentor: “I am Chavez. We are all Chavez.” And he promised to expand anti-poverty programs.
BERNAMA
