Photo: Matias Delacroix Associated Press Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado holds a national flag as she greets supporters as she arrives for a rally in Caracas, Venezuela, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024.
Fabiola Sánchez – Associated Press Caracas, Venezuela
Published at 9:25 p.m.
- Americas
Thousands of people gathered in the streets of Venezuela's capital on Saturday, waving the country's flag and singing the national anthem to support an opposition candidate they say won the presidential election by a landslide.
Electoral authorities declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s election, but have yet to produce the vote tally proving his victory. Instead, the government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed vote, and the president and his officials also threatened to jail opposition leader María Corina Machado and her presidential candidate, Edmundo González.
On Saturday, supporters chanted and sang as Ms. Machado arrived at the rally in Caracas. Ms. Machado, who was banned from running for office by Mr. Maduro’s government for 15 years, had been in hiding since Tuesday, saying her life and freedom were in danger. Masked assailants ransacked the opposition headquarters on Friday, taking documents and vandalizing the premises.
Ms. Machado waved a Venezuelan flag and vowed that the regime that has forced millions of Venezuelans to flee their country would finally end.
“We have overcome all the barriers! We have toppled them all,” Machado thundered. “The regime has never been so weak.”
On Friday, President Maduro said at a news conference that opposition members were planning an attack in a Caracas neighborhood near where Machado’s rally was taking place on Saturday. He said he had ordered the armed forces to guard the neighborhood and also urged his supporters to attend “the mother of all marches” elsewhere in Caracas on Saturday.
The Organization of American States (OAS) called Saturday for “reconciliation and justice” in Venezuela.
“May all Venezuelans who speak out in the streets find only an echo of peace, a peace that reflects the spirit of democracy,” the OAS said in a statement.
One Election, Many Counts
Ms. Machado and Mr. González, a 74-year-old former diplomat, said that the ballot papers they obtained from polling stations across the country show that Mr. Maduro was defeated by a landslide margin for a third six-year term.
An Associated Press (AP) analysis of vote tally sheets released Friday by Venezuela’s main opposition indicates that its candidate won far more votes in Sunday’s election than the government claimed, casting serious doubt on the official claim that Mr. Maduro won.
200% Deposit Bonus up to €3,000 180% First Deposit Bonus up to $20,000On Friday night, the country's highest court, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, ordered the National Electoral Council controlled by Nicolás Maduro to deliver vote tally sheets within three days. Several governments, including Mr. Maduro’s close regional allies, have called on Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release district-level tallies, as they have done after previous elections.
The AP processed nearly 24,000 images of tally sheets, representing results from 79 percent of voting machines, resulting in totals of 10.26 million votes.
According to the calculations, Mr. González received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the number attributed to Mr. Maduro by electoral authorities. The tables also show that Mr Maduro received 3.13 million votes on the published tally sheets.
For comparison, the National Electoral Council said Friday that, based on 96.87 percent of slips, Nicolás Maduro won 6.4 million votes and Gonzalez 5.3 million. National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso blamed the delay in updating results on “massive attacks” on “technological infrastructure.”
The AP could not independently verify the authenticity of the 24,532 scorecards provided by the opposition. The AP was able to extract data from 96% of the provided vote counts, with the remaining 4% of images being too poor to analyze.
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US protests
The Biden administration has strongly supported the opposition, recognizing Edmundo González as the winner and discrediting the official results of the National Electoral Council.
“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, more importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote in a statement.
Mr. González posted a message on X thanking the United States, while Mr. Maduro said Friday that the United States should stay out of Venezuelan politics.
There have been numerous diplomatic efforts by Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico to convince Maduro to allow an impartial audit of the vote. On Thursday, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela's electoral authorities “to move forward expeditiously and make public” detailed voting data.
On Friday, Maduro and his campaign manager, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, sought to discredit the tally sheets published online by the opposition, arguing that they were missing the signatures of the electoral council representative as well as election officials and party representatives.
They failed to acknowledge that soldiers, civilian militias, police and loyalists of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela prevented some opposition representatives from entering polling stations, watching the vote, signing and obtaining copies of the tally sheets on Sunday.