Protesters march and ride motorcycles as they demonstrate against the official election results declaring President Nicolas Maduro the winner, the day after the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 29.Fernando Vergara/The Associated Press
Venezuelan opposition candidate Edmundo González on Monday said his campaign has the proof it needs to show that he was the winner of the country’s highly anticipated presidential election whose victory authorities handed to President Nicolás Maduro.
Mr. González and opposition leader María Corina Machado told supporters gathered outside his campaign headquarters in Venezuela’s capital that they have obtained more than 70 per cent of the tally sheets from Sunday’s disputed election, and they show Mr. González ahead of Mr. Maduro.
“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” Mr. González said. “The will expressed yesterday through your vote will be respected. We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our victory.”
As he spoke, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets to protest what they said was an attempt by Mr. Maduro to steal the election in which both candidates claimed victory.
Shortly after the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Mr. Maduro’s ruling party, officially declared him the winner, angry protesters began marching through Caracas and cities across Venezuela. The electoral body’s announcement earned him a third six-year term.
In the capital, the protests were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked the caravan, a brawl broke. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at officers who had stationed themselves on a main avenue of an upper-class district.
A man fired a gun as the protesters moved through the city’s financial district. No one suffered a gunshot wound.
The demonstrations followed an election that was among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule. The winner was to take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change.
“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Mr. Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony. “An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’etat in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.”
“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected.”
In the capital’s impoverished Petare neighbourhood, people started walking and shouting against Mr. Maduro, and some masked young people tore down campaign posters of him hung on lampposts. Heavily armed security forces were standing just a few blocks away from the protest.
“It’s going to fall. It’s going to fall. This government is going to fall!” some of the protesters shouted as they walked.
“He has to go. One way or another,” said Maria Arraez, a 27-year-old hairdresser, as she joined in the demonstration.
As the crowd marched through a different neighbourhood, it was cheered on by retirees and office workers who banged on pots and recorded the protest in a show of support. There were some shouts of “freedom” and expletives directed at Mr. Maduro.
Elsewhere, some protesters attempted to block freeways, including one that connects the capital with a port city where the country’s main international airport is.
Officials delayed the release of detailed vote tallies from Sunday’s election after proclaiming Mr. Maduro the winner with 51 per cent of the vote, compared with 44 per cent for Mr. González, a retired diplomat. The competing claims set up a high-stakes standoff.
“Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” Mr. González said earlier. But he and his allies asked supporters to remain calm and called on the government to avoid stoking conflict.
Several foreign governments, including the U.S. and the European Union, held off recognizing the election results.
After failing to oust Mr. Maduro during three rounds of demonstrations since 2014, the opposition put its faith in the ballot box.
The country sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy. But after Mr. Maduro took the helm, it tumbled into a free fall marked by plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages of basic goods and hyperinflation of 130,000 per cent.
U.S. oil sanctions sought to force Mr. Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election, which dozens of countries condemned as illegitimate. But the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled their crisis-stricken nation.
Voters lined up as early as Saturday evening to cast ballots, boosting the opposition’s hopes it was about to break Mr. Maduro’s grip on power. The official results came as a shock to many who had celebrated, online and outside a few voting centres, what they believed was a landslide victory for Mr. González.
Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile, called the results “difficult to believe,” while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “serious concerns” that the announced tally did not reflect the actual votes or the will of the people.
In response to criticism from other governments, Mr. Maduro’s Foreign Affairs Ministry announced it would recall its diplomatic personnel from seven countries in the Americas, including Panama, Argentina and Chile. Foreign Minister Yván Gil asked the governments of those countries to do the same with their personnel in Venezuela.
He did not explain what would happen to the staff members of opposition leader Ms. Machado, including her campaign manager, who have sheltered for months in the Argentinian embassy in Caracas after authorities issued arrest warrants against them.
Ms. Machado said the margin of Mr. González’s victory was “overwhelming,” based on tallies the campaign received from representatives stationed at about 40 per cent of ballot boxes.
Authorities postponed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours.” The delay hampered attempts to verify the results.
Mr. González was the unlikeliest of opposition standard bearers. The 74-year-old was unknown until he was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Ms. Machado, who was blocked by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court from running for any office for 15 years.
Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former president Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Mr. Maduro. But Mr. Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which controls all branches of government, are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushingly low wages that spurred hunger, crippled the oil industry and separated families owing to migration.
The President’s pitch this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4 per cent this year – one of the fastest in Latin America – after shrinking 71 per cent from 2012 to 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under US$200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of food staples to feed a family of four for a month costs an estimated US$385.
The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
A former lawmaker, Ms. Machado swept the opposition’s October primary with more than 90 per cent of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That’s when Mr. González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Mr. González and Ms. Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the kind of economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years never materialized. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.