Maduro allies win majority in disputed Venezuela congress election

CARACAS: Allies of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro won a majority of votes in a parliamentary election that saw scant participation due to a boycott by the opposition, which said Sunday’s event was a farce meant to consolidate a dictatorship.

The elections council said that 67.6% of the 5.2 million votes cast in Sunday’s election went to an alliance of parties called the Great Patriotic Pole that backs Maduro – but that only 31% of eligible voters participated.

Voting centers were left barren in an embarrassment to the ruling Socialist Party, but the results nonetheless return congress to Maduro s control despite an economy in tatters, an aggressive US sanctions program, and a mass migration exodus.

“Venezuela already has a new national assembly,” Maduro said, in television remarks that were muted in comparison with his frequent triumphalism. “A great victory, without a doubt.”

Elections council chief Indira Alfonzo did not specify how many of the 277 seats would go to Maduro allies, based on the 82% of votes counted thus far. That was a departure from typical congressional poll-result announcements that usually break down the distribution of seats.

Alfonzo did name a handful of victorious candidates, however, including First Lady Cilia Flores and Diosdado Cabello, vice president of the Socialist Party.

She added that 17.95% of the votes went to parties who have described themselves as Maduro adversaries, but are widely suspected of being Maduro s shadow allies.

Earlier in the year, the supreme court had put several opposition parties in the hands of politicians expelled from those same parties for alleged links to Maduro – one of the major reasons the opposition had called the vote a sham.

The elections council was also named without the opposition s participation, and Maduro had refused to allow meaningful electoral observation.

“After the blackmail, the kidnapping of parties, censorship, fabrication of results, sowing terror, they announce what we have been saying – a fraud with 30%,” opposition leader Juan Guaido, the head of the current congress, wrote on Twitter.

The opposition in 2015 won congress in a landslide, but the pro-Maduro supreme court blocked even the most basic legislation. In 2017, Maduro supplanted parliament with the creation of an all-powerful body known as the National Constituent Assembly.

Opposition legislators nonetheless used the platform to denounce Maduro around the world for human rights abuses, corruption, and economic mismanagement, proving a constant thorn in the side of the Socialist Party.

Retaking control of congress will give Maduro few meaningful tools to restart an economy where a monthly salary or pension is often less than the cost of a kilo of meat or a carton of eggs.