Venezuela presidential election: EU calls for transparency in vote – live | Venezuela

There is lots of interest in Venezuela’s election in Spain.

Ione Belarra, who leads the far-left, anti-austerity Podemos party, has called for people to respect Sunday’s result, saying:

More than a thousand international observers have taken part in the Venezuelan election. The people have spoken and their will should be respected. The right only goes along with democracy when it wins and that is unacceptable.

Vicente Fox, a former president of Mexico, has said that “the people already decided” in Venezuela.

Sam Jones, the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent, recently spoke to Venezuelans abroad to see how they were feeling ahead of yesterday’s vote.

A hint of the emotion felt by many of the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans resident in Spain was evident in one of the placards on display at a pro-change rally in Madrid the Sunday before last.

“La única cola que quiero hacer es para patearte el culo Maduro!” it read – “The only queue I want to join is the one to kick your arse, Maduro!”

Thabata Molina, a Venezuelan journalist who has been in Spain for three years after spending seven years in Panama, said the demonstration showed the widespread desire for a major political shift back home.

“I think Venezuelans who want a change in their country are really excited right now because it feels like the first time in a long time that we’ve had a real hope for change,” she said.

“It’s not just the people who’ve always been against the regime; there are now a lot of people who were chavistas for years but who are now feeling hopeless and impatient for a drastic change that will improve things in Venezuela.”

According to Tomás Paéz, a university professor who is the president of the Venezuelan Diaspora Observatory, Spain is estimated to be home to around 600,000 of the 9 million people who have left Venezuela over the past 25 years and headed to more than 90 countries.

Paéz said many people abroad still had trouble understanding what had happened in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro, pointing out that the country’s economy had contracted by 80% between 2014 and 2021.

“It’s really difficult to explain what’s been going on in Venezuela,” he said. “As a university professor in Venezuela, I wouldn’t be able to earn more than $50 a month – and the cost of a month’s basic food for a family is $400.”

Sunday’s election, said Paéz, had raised hopes that “the country’s deterioration could be brought to an end and the process of free reconstruction begun”.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, has expressed concern that the announced results in Venezuela do not reflect the votes.

Speaking in Tokyo, he said:

We applaud the Venezuelan people for their participation in the July 28th presidential election.

We commend their courage and commitment to democracy in the face of repression and in the face of adversity.

We’ve seen the announcement just a short while ago by the Venezuelan electoral commission.

We have serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people.

It’s critical that every vote be counted fairly and transparently, that election officials immediately share information with the opposition and independent observers without delay, and that the electoral authorities publish the detailed tabulation of votes.

The international community is watching this very closely and will respond accordingly.

Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief, has stressed that “the people of Venezuela voted on the future of their country peacefully” and “their will must be respected.”

“Ensuring full transparency in the electoral process, including detailed counting of votes and access to voting records at polling stations, is vital,” he added.

Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority.

The result appeared to dash opposition hopes of ending his authoritarian, socialist rule after 25 years, and which was immediately challenged by rivals and several governments in the region and beyond.

After a six-hour delay in releasing the results of Sunday’s poll sparked an outpouring of international concern, Venezuela’s electoral council claimed Maduro had won with 51.21% of votes compared with 44.2% for his rival, the former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia.

Independent observers had described the election as the most arbitrary in recent years, even by the standards of an authoritarian regime that started with Maduro’s mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

González’s campaign had generated a rare wave of optimism among millions of disillusioned citizens after a wretched decade during which the economy of the country with the world’s largest oil reserves contracted by 80% and nearly 8 million people – almost a third of Venezuela’s population – fled abroad.

Read the full story here, by Patricia Torres in Caracas and Sam Jones in Madrid