Nicolás Maduro has been declared the winner of Venezuela’s presidential election by the government-controlled electoral authority. After a six-hour delay in releasing the results of Sunday’s election sparked an outpouring of concern from South American governments, the national 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 this election as the most arbitrary in recent years and the opposition party is alleging widespread fraud
