CARACAS, Jan 28 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Venezuela will hold parliamentary and regional elections on April 27, it announced Monday, though the opposition vowed a boycott after elections last year which President Nicolas Maduro is widely accused of stealing.
Maduro was sworn in this month for a highly contested third term after claiming victory in the July 28 vote, which the opposition says its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won.
Announcing the next elections, National Electoral Council (ENC) head Elvis Amoroso said all parties and candidates must sign a document “committing to respect” the process including “the results announced.”
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who is in hiding, last week already called for a boycott of the polls.
“The elections were on July 28. That day the people chose,” she said in a video posted on social media.
Maduro has been in power in 2013 since the death of his firebrand mentor, the late Hugo Chavez.
His first re-election in 2018 was also marred by fraud allegations but he has resisted international pressure and crippling US sanctions aimed at forcing him to step aside.
The ENC again proclaimed him victorious in July, without without providing a detailed breakdown of the vote.
The opposition published results from polling stations which it said showed a hands-down win for Gonzalez Urrutia, an elderly former diplomat, who has since been granted asylum in Spain.
The United States, its partners in the Group of Seven leading economies and several Latin American countries have all backed the opposition’s victory claim. — NNN-AGENCIES
