Venezuela’s electoral commission declares Maduro the winner

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — As thousands of people demonstrated across Venezuela, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez announced Monday that his campaign has evidence that he won the country’s disputed election, which electoral authorities have certified as his victory. President Nicolas Maduro.

Gonzalez and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told reporters: More than 70% of the summary table Two weeks after Sunday’s election, in which Gonzalez received more than double the votes than Maduro, both men called on people who protested hours after Maduro was declared the winner to remain calm and to gather peacefully at 11 a.m. Tuesday to celebrate the election results.

“I speak the truth calmly,” Gonzalez said as dozens of cheering supporters stood outside his campaign headquarters in the capital, Caracas. “We have in our hands the tabulations that prove our decisive and mathematically irreversible victory.”

Their announcement came after the National Electoral Commission, loyal to Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, formally declared him the winner and awarded him a third six-year term.

The protests in the capital were largely peaceful, but scuffles broke out when dozens of national police officers in riot gear blocked the caravan. Police used tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, some of whom hurled stones and other objects at police stationed on a main street in an upscale neighborhood.

As protesters moved through the city’s financial district, a man opened fire. No one was injured in the shooting.

The demo then election The election was one of the most peaceful in recent years, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of one-party rule. The winner will rule an economy recovering from collapse and a people desperate for change.

“We have never been motivated by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of those in power,” Maduro said at a nationally televised ceremony. “There is once again an attempt to stage a fascist and counter-revolutionary coup in Venezuela.”

“We already know the film. This time there will be no weaknesses,” he added, saying Venezuela’s “laws will be respected.”

Machado told reporters that the tally showed Maduro and Gonzalez received more than 2.7 million votes and about 6.2 million votes, respectively.

“A free people is a respected people, and we will fight for freedom,” Gonzalez said. “Dear friends, I understand your indignation, but our response as democratic forces will be calm and firm.”

Venezuelans vote using electronic voting machines that record the vote and give each voter a paper ballot showing their candidate of choice, which they are supposed to place in a ballot box before leaving the polling station.

After the polls close, each voting machine prints out a tally showing the names of the candidates and the number of votes they received.

But the ruling party maintains tight control over the voting system, both through its loyal five-member electoral committee and a network of long-time local party coordinators who have near-unlimited access to voting centers, some of whom are in charge of distributing government benefits such as subsidized food, but who block opposition representatives from entering voting centers as allowed by law to witness the voting process, the vote count, and, most importantly, obtain copies of the final machine tally.

Election officials had not yet released a tally of the 30,000 voting machines as of Monday evening. The official’s website was down, and it remained unclear when the tally would be released. The lack of release of the tally prompted an independent group of election observers and the European Union to publicly call on election officials to release it.

In the capital’s poor Petare district, people walked to chant their opposition to Maduro, with masked young people ripping down his election posters that had been hung from streetlights, as heavily armed security forces waited just a few blocks away.

“He has to go, whatever the circumstances,” said Maria Arraez, a 27-year-old hairdresser who took part in the protest.

As the crowd marched through different neighborhoods, retirees and office workers cheered them on by banging pots and pans or recording their protests in a show of support, some yelling “freedom” and hurling expletives at Maduro.

Several foreign governments, including the United States and the EU, have withheld recognition of the election results.

The opposition, having failed to oust President Maduro in three demonstrations since 2014, has put its faith in the ballot box.

The country boasts the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy, but has suffered a steep decline since Maduro came to power, including plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages of basic goods and 130,000 percent hyperinflation.

we Oil Sanctions Dozens of countries tried to remove Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which they called illegitimate, but the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans from the crisis-ridden country.

Voters I started lining up to vote on Saturday evening.The election results came as a shock to many who had been celebrating online and outside polling stations what they believed to be a landslide victory for Gonzalez, bolstering opposition hopes that they could undermine Mr Maduro’s grip on power.

Chile’s leftist leader Gabriel Boric called the results “hard to believe,” while US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US had “serious concerns” that the announced tally did not reflect the actual number of votes or the will of the people.

Responding to criticism from other governments, Maduro’s Foreign Ministry announced it was recalling diplomats from seven countries in the Americas, including Panama, Argentina and Chile, and Foreign Minister Ivan Gil called on those governments to do the same for their diplomats in Venezuela.

He did not explain what would happen to Machado’s staff, including his campaign manager, who have been hiding out in the Argentine Embassy in Caracas for months since authorities issued arrest warrants.

Mr. Gonzalez was the opposition’s most unlikely figure: The 74-year-old was a little-known figure until he was appointed at the last minute in April to represent Mr. Machado, a leading opposition figure who had been blocked from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court.

Authorities set Sunday’s election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist firebrand who committed the Bolivarian Revolution to Maduro when he died of cancer in 2013. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, which controls all branches of government, are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame oppressive low-wage policies that have stoked hunger, crippled the oil industry and caused poverty. Divided families For migration.

The president’s selling point in this election was economic stability, which he touted, citing entrepreneurship, a stable currency and low inflation. The International Monetary Fund projects the economy, which shrank 71% between 2012 and 2020, to grow 4% this year, the fastest in Latin America.

But most Venezuelans have not seen their quality of life improve, with many earning less than $200 a month and families struggling to afford basic necessities. Get a second or third jobThe cost of a basket of groceries to feed a family of four for a month is an estimated $385.

Opponents I managed to get in line It has supported a single candidate after years of internal party divisions and election boycotts thwarted its ambitions of toppling the ruling coalition.

Machado, a former congressman, won an opposition primary in October with a landslide victory, receiving more than 90% of the vote. After being barred from running for president, he chose a university professor as his replacement, but the National Electoral Commission banned her from registering as well. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.

Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns on Venezuela’s vast interior, which has never seen the economic boom seen in Caracas in recent years, and they promised a government that would create enough jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad. To go home And then they reunite with their families.