 In Venezuela, the Socialist candidate Nicolas Maduro has won a narrow victory in Presidential poll. Mr Maduro, who was chosen by the late President Hugo Chavez, won 50.7 per cent of the vote against 49.1 per cent for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. The electoral commission said the results were irreversible. Moments after Mr Maduro's victory was announced, celebrations started across the capital Caracas. Following the announcement, Mr Maduro acclaimed his victory as fair and legal and called for calm. The Venezuelan opposition candidate for the Presidency Henrique Capriles has said he will not recognise the result of the election until all votes are counted. At a press conference, a determined Mr Capriles said Nicholas Maduro was the defeated candidate and added that there were over three thousand incidents from Sunday's election that would need to be examined. Mr Maduro had been serving as acting President since Mr Chavez died of cancer last month. He is due to be sworn in on 19th of this month and serve until January 2019 to complete the six-year term that Mr Chavez would have begun in January |
Save Dissent to Save Democracy THE rising instances of physical violence and threats against political opponents and the inability to accept dissent must raise huge concerns amongst all of us who see democracy as perhaps the really stellar achievement since Independence. AAP’s attack on BJP headquarters and acts of arson committed under the very noses of their elite leadership; the attacks on Arvind Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia in Gujarat in the last two days; the recent manhandling of the caretaker of journalist Siddharth Varadarajan’s house by some garden variety thugs; and the violence and threats meted out regularly to their political opponents by political parties is surely deplorable and condemnable. This is a fatally flawed trend which will destroy the very foundations of our democratic institutions if not pushed back with all the strength and condemnation that the civil society can mobilise. Replaying the past To begin with, it must be clarified that we should ...
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