World leaders and election observers are calling on Venezuela to release the full results of the country’s presidential election after President Nicolas Maduro was formally declared the winner of an election the opposition alleges was rigged.
Few stores were open and public transport was sparse in Venezuela’s normally bustling capital, Caracas, on Monday after the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced that Maduro had secured another six years as president.
CNE’s Elvis Amoroso said Venezuelans had voted by majority to re-elect Maduro as president “for the term 2025-2031.”
“There is an attempt to stage a coup in Venezuela,” the 61-year-old Maduro said in a televised address from Caracas, claiming without providing evidence.
“We already know the film. This time there will be no weaknesses,” he added, saying Venezuela’s “laws will be respected.”
Election authorities controlled by Maduro’s allies have not released the results from 30,000 polling stations across Venezuela after Sunday’s vote, raising suspicions and claims of voter fraud.
Opposition leaders had earlier said tallying numbers from campaign center representatives showed opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had a landslide victory over Maduro.
But CNE reported that Gonzalez was unable to defeat the president, receiving only 44% of the support to Maduro’s 51%.
“The Venezuelan people and the whole world know what happened,” Gonzalez said in his first comments since the results were announced. He and his supporters urged their supporters to remain calm and called on the government not to foment conflict.
Eating breakfast on a bench next to a Caracas store before it opened Monday morning, Venezuelan voter David Cadenas, 28, said he felt cheated.
“I can’t believe yesterday’s results,” Cadenas, who voted for the first time in the presidential election on Sunday, told The Associated Press.
As political uncertainty continues to swirl in the South American country, leaders across the region and around the world are calling on Venezuela to release a full breakdown of the election results.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the secretary-general was calling for “full transparency” and “timely publication of the election results and a breakdown by polling station.”
“The secretary-general trusts that all disputes surrounding the elections will be addressed and resolved peacefully and calls on all Venezuelan political leaders and their supporters to respond moderately,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The Carter Center, which sent election observers to Venezuela for the election, also called on election authorities to immediately release the presidential results by polling station.
“The information contained in the polling station-level results forms transmitted to the CNE is crucial for our assessment and important for all Venezuelans,” the group said in a statement.
“They robbed us.”
Maduro first came to power in 2013 after the death of his leader and predecessor Hugo Chavez and has caused an economic collapse that has forced millions to flee the country.
Venezuela has also been internationally isolated due to sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and others, dealing a blow to its already struggling oil industry.
Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo, reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, said there was an immediate sense of disappointment among Venezuelans who were “hoping for change” from Sunday’s vote.
Many also expressed anger at the election results and the way they were announced. [showing] The question “where the votes are coming from” has yet to be announced, she noted.
Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek Saab, an ally of Mr Maduro, said on Monday he had opened an investigation into the alleged cyberattack on election systems.
Saab accused opposition leaders of being involved but did not provide any evidence to back up his claims.
“Now the government is claiming it won the election but saying it’s under attack,” Bo reported.
“This is not what the people on the streets are saying. Millions of Venezuelans are convinced that there has been massive fraud.”
Noisy sounds echoed from Caracas’ Petare and 23 de Enero neighborhoods, traditionally working-class strongholds of the United Socialist Party, on Monday morning as neighbors took part in a cacerolazo, a traditional Latin American protest movement that involves banging pots and pans.
“President Maduro’s comments yesterday have shattered my greatest dream of being reunited with my only daughter who went to Argentina three years ago,” Dalia Romero, a 59-year-old retiree, told Reuters in the northwestern Venezuelan city of Maracaibo.
“I was here alone with breast cancer so that my mother could work and send me money for her treatment,” she said tearfully. “I now know that I am going to die alone, never to see her again.”
Ender Nunez, a 42-year-old driver from Maracaibo, also expressed his disappointment: “We have six more years of this nightmare. The worst part is that they took our money,” he said.
Request for an emergency meeting
Meanwhile, nine Latin American countries have called for an emergency meeting of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) due to concerns about the election results.
Panama, one of the targeted countries, also announced it was “suspending” diplomatic ties with Venezuela and withdrawing its diplomats from the country until a full review is carried out.
“We are suspending diplomatic relations until a full investigation into the voting records and voting computer system has been carried out,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino told a news conference.
Al Jazeera’s Bo explained that the request to hold an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting was not surprising as the governments involved were primarily “right-wing governments”. [that] “Traditionally, we have been against Venezuela.”
Instead, she said, “all eyes are now on what the left-wing or centre-left governments in the region have to say about the election results.”
On Monday morning, the government of Brazilian leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for an “impartial validation” of the results.
Chile’s leftist President Gabriel Boric said his government “will not recognize any results that cannot be verified” and called on Venezuela to provide “full transparency of the electoral records and the electoral process.”
