Important Takeaways:

• Venezuela on brink of civil war after BOTH Putin’s pal Maduro & opposition leader declare victory in tinderbox election
• Official results said Maduro, 61, had claimed 51.2 per cent of the vote, while opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, 74, received 44.2 per cent of the vote.
• But the Venezuelan opposition has also claimed victory with their presidential candidate Gonzalez receiving 70 per cent of the vote in their own tabulation.
• Maduro controls the ballot process through cronies and has been accused by the opposition of rigging the vote.
• Marxist Maduro has blasted them back, saying it was the “extreme right” opposition who had committed “fraud”.
• He threatened “justice” for those who challenge the results, telling cheering supporters in Caracas late Sunday night: “They are ugly faces. The gorgeous ones are the people who are here and noble.”
• Maduro also accused, without evidence, foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system of the South American country.
• But Gonzalez claimed the opposition was kept from scrutinizing results and said they “knew what happened”.
• He said: “All rules and norms were violated to an extent that we were denied seeing most of the ballots.
• The National Electoral Council is yet to release results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide.
• Long-suffering Venezuelans saw the vote as their best opportunity to end 25 years of socialist one-party rule
• Videos posted to social media on Sunday showed massive queues with claims spreading that voters were blocked from entering polling stations.
• The brave turnout came after Maduro threatened last weekend that electing the opposition would see the country fall into a “bloodbath” and “civil war”.

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