Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has blocked the elections. in the country after he claimed that the platform’s owner had incited hatred and “violated” the rules of his own social network. “Shame on dictator Maduro,” WHO that the sitting president had committed “serious election fraud.”
Maduro, who also claimed his rivals were using the platform to foment political unrest, said he had given the green light to a proposal from the national telecoms authority to “take the social network X, formerly known as Twitter, out of circulation in Venezuela for 10 days,” the who said his reporters in the country had no access to X after the proclamation. X does not have a public relations department that can be reached for comment.
While Musk arguably inflamed the situation in Venezuela, Maduro could use him as a scapegoat, giving him a pretext to temporarily block X and try to suppress discussion of the election results. The president claimed victory in the July presidential election, but the the outcome is disputed.
Independent exit polls and reviews of voting machine data indicated that Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, may have received twice as many votes as the incumbent president. However, the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council claimed that Maduro received 52 percent of the vote, while González received 43 percent. The council has not yet produced vote counts as required by law.
