Caracas, Feb 16 (Prensa Latina) Sirens, fireworks, and music in the streets of numerous Venezuelan cities are showing on Sunday there is still joy in this country, due to the victory that made possible continuous reelection for public posts.
Thousands of followers of President Hugo Chavez began to celebrate on Sunday night, after the preliminary official results, and continued until Monday's early morning. According to the first official bulletin to announce the results, after counting 94.2 percent of the votes, the Yes option won 6,003,594 votes, 54.36 percent. In her report, National Electoral Council Chair Tibisay Lucena said the adversaries won 5,040,082 votes (45.63 percent), and will not being able to reach their rivals, when there are 826,250 votes yet to be counted. We wish to congratulate the people of Venezuela, for its civic, democratic and cheerful behavior on Monday, which was an extraordinary day, said Lucena, highlighting that participation was over 70 percent, one of the largest ever. There was massive participation in this electoral day, she said after congratulating both winners and those defeated. "We are asking those who won to celebrate with pride, peace and generosity above all, and those whose option did not win go in peace, because it was a wonderful day, in which they also played an important role," she said. Around 17 million Venezuelans were called to participate this day, when changes to five constitutional articles were approved. This way, Chavez followers have won in 10 years 14 of 15 electoral processes of presidential, parliamentary, regional, and elections and referendums. They only lost the referendum held in 2007 for a constitutional reform.
