SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGEN­CIES

■ The vote in Bari­nas, hailed by op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, marks the first vic­to­ry for the op­po­si­tion in 23 years ■

(AL JAZEERA) — Venezuela’s op­po­si­tion won an his­toric vic­to­ry in a tense re­run gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Bari­nas, a re­gion ruled by the fam­i­ly of late Pres­i­dent Hugo Chavez for more than two decades.

Ac­cord­ing to re­sults an­nounced late on Sun­day, op­po­si­tion law­mak­er Ser­gio Gar­ri­do, 54, de­feat­ed the rul­ing par­ty’s can­di­date Jorge Ar­reaza, 48, who served as the coun­try’s vice pres­i­dent and for­eign min­is­ter and was Chavez’s son-in-law.

Gar­ri­do, who ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Elec­toral Coun­cil (CNE) won 55.36 per­cent of the vote, wel­comed the re­sult.

“With the uni­ty and strength of each of you, we have suc­ceed­ed … suc­ceed­ed in over­com­ing ob­sta­cles and ad­ver­si­ty de­spite all that we have had to face,” Gar­ri­do wrote on Twit­ter.

Ar­reaza con­ced­ed de­feat be­fore the re­sults were an­nounced tweet­ing “we did not achieve the goal” of win­ning.

The re­run gu­ber­na­to­r­i­al elec­tion in Bari­nas state, where Chavez’s fa­ther and broth­ers have held po­lit­i­cal pow­er since 1998, was con­duct­ed amid wide­spread claims of rul­ing par­ty in­ter­fer­ence.

An ini­tial elec­tion on No­vem­ber 21 was can­celled by a court af­ter it ap­peared to be go­ing the way of op­po­si­tion fig­ure Fred­dy Su­per­lano, mark­ing the first de­feat in Bari­nas in 23 years for the Unit­ed So­cial­ist Par­ty of Venezuela (PSUV), now head­ed by Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which is one of many gov­ern­ment bod­ies seen as loy­al to Maduro’s gov­ern­ment, grant­ed a re­quest by the coun­try’s pub­lic fi­nances watch­dog to de­clare Su­per­lano “in­el­i­gi­ble” be­cause of “ad­min­is­tra­tive and crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions” in­to ac­cu­sa­tions of cor­rup­tion and or­dered new elec­tions to be held with­out him.

Su­per­lano was dis­qual­i­fied on No­vem­ber 29 while he was ahead by less than a per­cent­age point over Ar­ge­nis Chávez, one of Hugo Chávez’s broth­ers. Su­per­lano’s wife, who was cho­sen as his suc­ces­sor, was dis­qual­i­fied, too.

Ar­ge­nis Chávez re­signed as gov­er­nor fol­low­ing Su­per­lano’s dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion and did not en­ter the race in the spe­cial elec­tion, leav­ing the gov­er­nor’s bal­lot free of a Chavez fam­i­ly mem­ber for the first time in more than two decades. The rul­ing par­ty then chose Ar­reaza as its can­di­date.

In pick­ing Ar­reaza, Maduro said the rul­ing par­ty need­ed a new can­di­date “to go to the res­cue”.

Be­fore dawn on Sun­day, gov­ern­ment lead­ers and rul­ing-par­ty sup­port­ers gath­ered in a ral­ly chant­i­ng, “Chávez lives, and in Bari­nas, the home­land con­tin­ues!”

Hugo Chavez re­mains pop­u­lar in Bari­nas for re­dis­trib­ut­ing the coun­try’s vast oil wealth to the poor, but al­so blamed for the coun­try’s now mis­er­able econ­o­my and sky-high crime rate.

Op­po­si­tion leader Juan Guai­do, who is recog­nised by the Unit­ed States and dozens of oth­er gov­ern­ments as Venezuela’s true pres­i­dent over Maduro, wel­comed the re­sult in Bari­nas on Sun­day night.

“Beau­ti­ful Bari­nas, where it start­ed, ends,” he tweet­ed, re­fer­ring to the cra­dle of Chav­is­mo. “Unit­ed we will de­fend the will of a pow­er­ful ma­jor­i­ty that will not sur­ren­der, nor will it, un­til we see democ­ra­cy again in Venezuela.”

Maduro’s 2018 re-elec­tion was re­ject­ed as il­le­git­i­mate by part of the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty.

His par­ty won big in the No­vem­ber 21 vote, which Eu­ro­pean Union ob­servers said was marred by ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties, in­clud­ing the wide­spread use of state re­sources and “ar­bi­trary dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tions” of chal­lengers.

Maduro dis­missed the claims and called the mem­bers of the EU elec­toral mis­sion sent to ob­serve the polls “spies”.