Maduro’s Venezuela election win can’t be recognised due to ‘exceptional manipulation’: OAS

The Organisation of American States’ (OAS) election observation department said on Tuesday it cannot recognise the results by Venezuela’s national electoral council declaring President Nicolas Maduro the winner of Sunday’s disputed vote.

The 35-member regional body, which is to meet about Venezuela on Wednesday, said Venezuela’s National Election Council (CNE) had shown itself biased towards the government.

The CNE said Maduro had won with 51 per cent of votes, but the opposition said the 73 per cent of vote tallies to which it has access showed its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had more than twice as many votes as Maduro.

Protests have erupted in Venezuela, while the United States and various Latin American leaders have rejected the results or said greater transparency is needed.

“The events of election night confirm a coordinated strategy, unfolding over recent months, to undermine the integrity of the electoral process,” the OAS body’s report said.

It contained accounts of illegalities and malpractices that occurred in this and past Venezuelan elections.

“The evidence shows an effort by the regime to ignore the will of the majority expressed in the polls by millions of Venezuelan men and women,” the report said.