Russian President Vladimir Putin and Cuban President Raul Castro congratulated Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro on his victory to succeed the late Hugo Chavez. But the Opposition candidate refused to accept the result and demanded a full recount
In a congratulatory message published in the newspaper Granma, Raul Castro said that Maduro’s victory “shows the strength of the ideas and work of Commandante Hugo Chavez,” who last month died of cancer. “The Russian head of state expressed confidence that under the leadership of Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela will continue to strengthen its strategic partnership with Russia,” Russia said in a statement.
Maduro was declared winner by a razor-thin margin today over opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who refused to concede defeat. Russia and Venezuela have enjoyed close relations in the past decades, with Moscow selling Caracas large supplies of arms to Washington’s great unease.
Venezuela was also one of a handful of countries to recognise South Ossetia and Abkhazia, two breakaway regions of Georgia that Russia proclaimed independent after winning a brief 2008 war with the small ex-Soviet State.
The Kremlin statement said Putin hoped to “further develop a constructive dialogue (with Venezuela) on a full range of bilateral and international issues of interest to the two countries and their peoples.”
Maduro, acting president since Chavez’s March 5 death, held a double-digit advantage in opinion polls just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he got just 50.7 per cent of the votes to 49.1 per cent for Capriles with nearly all ballots counted.
The margin of win is about 2,34,935 votes. Turnout was 78 per cent, down from just over 80 per cent in the October election that Chavez won by a nearly 11-point margin over Capriles.