By Dan Calabrese —— Bio and Archives May 21, 2018
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Venezuela’s leftist President Nicholas Maduro has easily won a second term, but his main rivals have refused to accept the results, calling the polling fraudulent — a view shared by the United States and many independent observers. Venezuela’s National Election Council, run by Maduro loyalists, said that with nearly 93 percent of polling stations reporting by Sunday, Maduro had won almost 68 percent of the vote, beating his nearest challenger, Henri Falcon, by almost 40 points. “They underestimated me,” said a triumphant Maduro to cheers from his supporters as fireworks sounded and confetti fell at the presidential palace in Caracas. Maduro, 55, replaced Hugo Chavez when the longtime Venezuelan socialist died of cancer in 2013. Since then, Maduro has presided over a collapsing economy, hyperinflation, widespread hunger and a mass of refugees trying to escape the desperate conditions. The country has been further hit by falling oil exports and U.S. imposed sanctions. Fewer than half of registered voters turned up at the polls, but the opposition, which has boycotted the election, said even that figure was inflated.
Those opposed to Maduro have long maintained that the election is fraudulent, not least because the opposition’s most popular leaders — the ones with the best chance of unseating the president — were barred from running. As NPR’s Philip Reeves reports from Caracas, “Throughout the day voting stations appeared almost empty around the capital.” Despite that, election officials claim turnout of nearly 50 percent.You have to love Maduro’s boast that people “underestimated” him. Hardly. Everyone knew the announced outcome would be something like this, and everyone knew he would be very effective at jailing his real opposition and manipulating the polling data to give him exactly the result he wanted. Who underestimated that? It was as predictable as the sun rising in the east. Here’s another area where we don’t underestimate Maduro: He has destroyed Venezuela. No small feat. He’s taken one of the most mineral-rich countries in the world and decimated its economy through corruption, mismanagement and graft. He’s taken a country that could be a major player in global energy markets and put it in a position to have to beg Russia for credit extensions just to pay the interest on its existing debt. He’s causing his people to starve because government control of production and distribution has caused shortages so severe, we’ve seen people hijacking trucks filled with live chickens so they can get food.
Dan Calabrese’s column is distributed by HermanCain.com, which can be found at HermanCain
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