You would surprise your self. In latin america every party riggs ellections. Maduro did it before. Everybody knew it. The only difference here is the margin.
Then in Latin America, there are no leftist parties.
I'm not saying "leftists are too pure to rig elections" what I'm arguing is that from the definition of leftist it immediately follows that rigging elections is fundamentally incompatible. Leftist believe in workers having control. If the workers have control, it implies the existence of a democratic process. From this it immediately follows that officials who don't have qualms rigging elections are acting in ways that are fundamentally incompatible with leftism.
It's funny to see how this is reported in different countries. Some don't focus much on the "unpleasantness" remark, they focused on this pearl also in the article:
"It's different to a dictatorship—it is a government with an authoritarian slant but it isn't a dictatorship the likes of which we know so many in this world."