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Maduro narrowly wins Venezuela election
April 15, 2013, 5:38 am

Maduro says he won by a margin of 300,000 votes [Xinhua]

Maduro says he won by a margin of 300,000 votes [Xinhua]

The late Hugo Chavez’s handpicked successor Nicolas Maduro narrowly defeated his rival Henrique Capriles Radonski in a presidential election held six weeks after the former leader’s death to cancer.

National Electoral Council’s President Tibisay Lucena said on Sunday that Maduro won the presidential election with 50.66 per cent of the votes, while Capriles only gained 49.1 per cent of the votes.

The Electoral Council said that nearly 80 per cent of eligible voters participated in the election.

Capriles and the opposition, however, have refused to recognise the election results citing irregularities, and have called for a full vote recount.

Maduro, the current acting president in the wake of Chavez’s death, says that he won by a margin of 300,000 votes.

Analysts believe that while Maduro lacks Chavez’s political acumen, he is likely to continue to breathe life in the leftist dream that his former mentor had for Latin America.

Source: Agencies