Venezuelan President-elect Nicolas Maduro has blamed the US Embassy for violent post-election protests today, saying the embassy has been financing “neo-nazi groups” in carrying out attacks.
Officials say that seven people were killed in today’s protests, and 61 others were injured. Prosecutor Luisa Ortega says that 135 people have been arrested nationwide.
The rallies were called by Henrique Capriles, the other candidate in the elections. Though the election council ruled he was defeated, he is now demanding recounts and says he won’t recognize the result of the razor-thin vote.
The US State Department says it won’t recognize the results either, and they are also demanding a “full recount” and says they won’t accept the election’s certification by the election commission either, even though that’s already happened.
Maduro and Capriles ran a particularly ugly campaign, and Venezuela seems divided more or less down the middle on the two of them. The US is clearly more comfortable with Capriles, however, and is unlikely to recognize any result that doesn’t give him the office.
What kind of arrogant SOBs run this country that think they have the right to not recognize another country's elections?
The fact is that a majority (50..75% ) of Venezuelan voters elected Maduro by a margin of 1.78% (or 265,256 votes) over Capriles' 48.97% of the votes. Even the lone Capriles supporter on the CNE (national election commission), Vicente Diaz, stated that "I have no doubts over the results" of the election (although he encouraged Capriles to file a formal challenge under existing Venezuelan law, which he can do within 20 days of the election). Thus far Capriles has simply demanded a recount, saying that according to his "calculations" he feels he won. What such "calculations" might be are rather mysterious, since the entire election process is computerized and nobody has any reason to doubt that the official results are erroneous. Further, the pre-election polls showed Maduro winning by margins exceeding 10%, so the only surprise was the narrowness of Maduro's win. Still, he got a majority of the votes and beat Capriles by nearly 2% — which is not particularly close by US election standards. Perhaps Capriles will file a formal challenge; but unless and until he does, there is no reason for a recount and no legal basis for one.
I thought Florida was a little bit more to the north.