The power party of Venezuela claims the electoral victory as a boycott of the opposition

The power party of Venezuela celebrates what he described as “an overwhelming victory” in the regional and parliamentary elections, which were boycotted by the majority of opposition parties.

The Electoral Council (CNE), which is dominated by the government’s loyalists, says that candidates for the UNI Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) – the party of President Nicolás Maduro – won the race for the governor in 23 of the 24 states of the country.

According to the CNE, the management coalition also won 82.68% of the votes expressed for the National Assembly, the Legislative Body of Venezuela.

The main opposition parties have described the “farce” elections. The head of the opposition, María Corina Machado, said that the participation rate was less than 15%.

“More than 85% of Venezuelans did not obey this regime and said” no “,” said Machado about those who abstained.

Independent journalists who have visited polling stations throughout the day said they had not seen any queues and fewer people were that for the presidential election last July.

The CNE has participated in 42.6%.

The opposition has long questioned the independence of the CNE, led by Elvis Amoroso, a former legal adviser from President Maduro.

The CNE came for generalized international criticisms last year when she declared Mr. Maduro the winner of the presidential election without ever providing detailed voting accounts to support their complaint.

The opposition of Venezuela, on the other hand, published voting accounts which he had gathered with the help of official electoral observers who showed that his candidate, Edmundo González, was the crushing winner.

In the midst of the wave of repression and arrests that followed the presidential election, González went into exile in Spain.

Machado, who threw his weight behind the presidential hope Edmundo González after being forbidden to present himself to public functions, remained in Venezuela.

It was the main defender of the boycott of the legislative and governors on Sunday, saying that the result of the July presidential election should be respected before new elections are held.

“We voted on July 28. On May 25, we will not vote,” she said in a video message shared earlier this month.

However, a handful of opposition politicians presented themselves in the elections, arguing that leaving the ground open to government candidates was a mistake.

Among them, the former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, the governor of the state of Zulia, Manuel Rosales and Juan Resesens, who was imprisoned by the government of Maduro for having pretended to participate in a drone attack in 2018 against the president.

Capriles told the Spanish daily El País that for him “to vote in Venezuela is an expression of resistance, of resilience, not to abandon”.

Their decision to arise in the elections was criticized by those who call a boycott, with Machado saying that they had “betrayed the cause”.

With the participation rate, the PSUV party of President Maduro won the victory in 23 of the 24 Governor’s races, up the 20 Governor positions which she had previously occupied.

According to the preliminary results of the legislative elections, the coalition supporting President Maduro won an absolute majority of the 285 seats.

But three opposition politicians from the opposition of Henrique Capriles were also elected to the National Assembly, including Capriles itself.

Maduro praised the result as a “victory for peace and stability” and celebrated the fact that his party had regained control of the states of Zulia and, in particular, of Barinas, the original state of his predecessor in office and political mentor, Hugo Chávez.

Only the state of Cojede will now be in the hands of the opposition, following the re -election of the opposition candidate Alberto Galíndez.

Sunday’s vote was preceded by a wave of arrests, which saw more than 70 people with links with the opposition held for allegedly “planned to sabotage the elections”.

Among the detained persons is Juan Pablo Guanipa, 60, a close ally of María Corina Machado. The Minister of the Interior accused him of being “one of the leaders of this terrorist network” who, according to him, had plotted to disturb the elections by planting bombs on key sites.

Machado said that his arrest and dozens of others were “state terrorism, pure and simple”.

Venezuelans voters have also been invited to choose representatives of the Essequibo region, a territory for a long time administered and controlled by neighboring Guyana that Venezuela affirms like his.

The territorial dispute was submitted by Guyana to the International Court of Justice, which had ordered Venezuela to refrain from elections for representatives of the region, an order that the Maduro government has challenged.

As Venezuela does not control the Essequibo, there were no polling stations in the territory and the people who lived there had the chance to vote.

Instead, voters of a small district expressly created for this purpose on the Venezuelan side of the border were invited to vote, which will have only symbolic value.

Neil Villamizar, an admiral loyal to President Maduro, won the unusual vote and will now be declared “Governor of Essequibo” by the Venezuelan government even if he has no power or control over the territory, which remains in the hands of the Guyans.

Guyana president Irfaan Ali denounced this decision as a “scandalous, false, propagandist, opportunistic” and said that he would do everything to ensure that our territorial integrity and our sovereignty are maintained intact “.