In Venezuela’s Flawed Vote, Maduro Shows One Way to Retain Power

The mission, however, highlighted several democratic improvements in Sunday’s elections, going as far as to call the country’s electronic vote processing system “reliable.”

The United States, which does not recognize Mr. Maduro’s government, called the election deeply flawed, but commended the opposition candidates who decided to participate to keep the few democratic offices they still held.

At polling places in Caracas on Sunday, many voters expressed little confidence in the fairness of the election, but said they had decided to show up anyway, in some cases because they viewed their vote as their last tool in a fight for change.

“I know the whole process is controlled,” said Blas Roa, 55, a carpenter in Caracas, who voted for the first time since 2015. “But if I don’t vote, I’m not doing anything.”

Most Venezuelans didn’t bother.

Only 42 percent of voters cast ballots, the lowest turnout in any election in which the opposition had participated in the last two decades. After 20 years of Socialist rule, few in the country still nurture hopes of radical change, focusing instead on taking advantage of the new economic freedoms to improve their precarious livelihoods.

That government-induced apathy ended up being Mr. Maduro’s biggest weapon in the elections, said the opposition leader Freddy Superlano, who ran for governor in the ranching state of Barinas, once a major Socialist Party bastion and home of the party’s founder, Hugo Chávez.

That contest remained too close to call Tuesday afternoon.

The outcome would have been different, Mr. Superlano said, if opposition factions had put aside their misgivings and mounted a concerted campaign.

Death Toll of Russian Strike in Dnipro Rises to 40, Ukraine Says

Climbing over shards of concrete and metal, scraps of cloth and pulverized furniture, emergency workers found one body after another on Monday, lifting them out of the cratered wreckage that had once been bedrooms and kitchens in one of Ukraine’s largest cities. The crews reported a new toll on Monday, days after the desperate search […]

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Death Toll in Apartment Strike Rises to 40

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain with NATO troops at a military base in Estonia in December.Credit…Henry Nicholls/Reuters In pledging to send a squadron of tanks to Ukraine, Britain is leading a push for Western allies to accelerate the delivery of modern weapons for Kyiv’s war effort as fears rise that Russia will soon begin […]

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Covid Workers in China Clash With Police Over Unpaid Wages, Layoffs

After China’s abrupt reversal of “zero Covid” restrictions, the nation’s vast machinery of virus surveillance and testing collapsed, even as infections and deaths surged. Now, the authorities face another problem: Angry pandemic-control workers demanding wages and jobs. In the southwestern Chinese city of Chongqing, hundreds of workers locked in a pay dispute with a Covid […]

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