Spain urges 'total transparency' in vote count after Venezuela election

Spain’s Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares called on Monday for Venezuela to ensure ‘total transparency’ in the vote count after President Nicolás Maduro was re-elected in a controversial vote.

Maduro won 51.2% of votes, while opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia received 44.2%, according to official results. But the opposition coalition insists it got 70% of the vote.

‘What we want is total transparency in the process. And that is why what we are asking for, and what we also expect, is the publication of the results voting table by voting table, so that we can verify the results,’ the Spanish minister told Cadena Ser radio station.

Some 9,000 Venezuelan nationals in Spain reportedly voted in the weekend election, out of a total resident population of around half a million.

‘At the moment we have some raw figures that have been given and, as you can see, there is a division of opinion,’ he added.

Since 2013, Maduro has been at the helm of the once wealthy petro-state where GDP dropped by 80% in a decade, pushing more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate.

He is accused of locking up critics in the former Spanish colony and harassing the opposition in a climate of rising authoritarianism.

🎙️ Hablamos con José Manuel Albares (@jmalbares), ministro de Asuntos Exteriores (@MAECgob) sobre los resultados en Venezuela:

“Queremos transparencia total para que se puedan certificar los datos mesa a mesa y que se cuente cada voto” pic.twitter.com/ERrXk4ETIt

— Hoy por Hoy (@HoyPorHoy) July 29, 2024