Protests have erupted across Venezuela over the re-election of authoritarian President Nicolas Maduro, with the opposition claiming they have evidence they won Sunday’s vote and the government responding with a crackdown.
Just hours after the government-controlled National Electoral Commission (CNE) certified Maduro’s victory, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado declared her candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez, the true winner, based on opposition tally from 73% of polling stations, with 6.2 million votes to Maduro’s 2.7 million.
“I speak the truth calmly,” Gonzalez said at a news conference, standing alongside Machado. “We have in our hands the tally that proves our victory.”
CNE reported that Maduro had won with 51.2% of the vote to Gonzalez’s 44.2% with 80% of the votes counted. The former diplomat had been leading Maduro by at least 20 percentage points in independent opinion polls and held a clear lead in exit polls and preliminary estimates on Sunday.
Protesters marched through Caracas on Monday, heading to the center of the capital and the Miraflores presidential palace. Many carried Venezuelan flags, some with face coverings and carrying large wooden sticks. Police responded by firing tear gas in some areas, sending large clouds of smoke into the afternoon sky.
Videos shared on social media showed men in plainclothes firing live ammunition from handguns at protesters in Santa Capilla, a few blocks from the palace.
“We’ve had enough. We want change,” said protester Leidys Mojares, 33. “We want a better life for our children. Maduro is no longer our president. I was really disappointed with last night’s result. I cried, I screamed. I saw my 13-year-old daughter crying and I said to her: ‘How long is this going to go on?'”
By early afternoon, people in many neighborhoods across Caracas were chanting “It’s a scam!” and banging pots and pans against their windows in protest..
Unrest was reported in poor as well as middle-class neighborhoods, and protesters set up barricades with burning tires on the edge of the city, on a road leading to the airport in nearby La Guaira, as unrest spilled onto the streets in cities across the country.
Videos shared on social media showed protesters toppling a statue of Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez, in the northwestern Venezuelan town of Coro as a crowd cheered. Maduro had called for elections on Sunday, what would have been Chavez’s 70th birthday.
Maduro’s closest allies – Russia, China, Iran and Cuba – welcomed his victory, but the United States, the European Union and Britain demanded a detailed breakdown of the vote. Regional power Brazil has tried to mediate between Maduro and the opposition.
The CNE ignored calls to release the detailed results, claiming that the tally was disrupted by hackers, and instead organised a ceremony to appoint him president until 2031.
“Yesterday, Venezuela fought and decisively defeated fascism, hatred and the devil in our land,” Maduro, a former bus driver and trade union activist, said in a combative 90-minute speech.
“There is once again an attempt to carry out a fascist and counter-revolutionary coup in Venezuela,” he added.
Opposition leaders said soldiers took ballot boxes and results sheets from many polling stations instead of handing them over to party officials.
Machado was disqualified from running for office by the Supreme Court and instead campaigned on Gonzalez’s behalf, holding rallies across the country.
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab on Monday accused her, along with two exiled opposition leaders, of participating in a cyberattack on the country’s electoral system, and warned that “calls for acts of violence or to contest the results of elections” are punishable by three to six years in prison.
The outcome sparked tensions across Latin America, with Venezuela ordering diplomats from Argentina, Chile, Peru and four other countries to leave immediately, accusing their governments of “openly devoting themselves to the most vile ideological attitudes of international fascism.”
Argentina’s liberal President Javier Milley refused to recognise the results, calling them an “electoral fraud”, while Chile’s leftist President Gabriel Boric said he “cannot believe it”.
The dispute over Maduro’s election victory also poses a dilemma for the administration of President Joe Biden, who negotiated with Maduro to hold competitive elections and temporarily eased sanctions on state oil company PDVSA in October.
The United States reimposed oil sanctions in April but has granted exceptional licenses to individual companies, including Chevron, Morel & Promm and Repsol, allowing them to continue operating in Venezuela.
Senior administration officials said Washington had not yet decided how to respond. “Retroactively changing any previously granted licenses is not currently being considered,” one official said.
Another official balked at the notion that Washington’s Venezuela policy had been a failure, pointing to the release of Americans from Venezuelan prisons and the fact that elections have been held. “We’re in a much better position now than we were three years ago,” he said.
Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas, a business lobbying group, said the United States didn’t have many good options because it was distracted by its own elections and “unwilling to face a nasty new global crisis.”
Venezuela’s oil-rich economy, bolstered by the easing of price and currency controls, has recovered slightly after shrinking by three-quarters between 2013 and 2021. During that time, the country faced hyperinflation, frequent power outages and food and medicine shortages. Some 7.7 million Venezuelans, roughly a quarter of the population, fled the country.
Venezuela’s debt fell more than a cent in the secondary market on Monday as investors worried the drop would complicate efforts to restructure about $160 billion in sovereign debt.
Additional reporting by Ciara Nugent
