What’s happening in Venezuela – protests, election uncertainty, economic crisis

CNN
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Amid allegations of fraud, and uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the election, citizens across Venezuela took to the streets on Monday to protest the questionable election, clashing with police.

At least six people have been killed in protests against the presidential election results announced by the Venezuelan electoral commission, according to a social media post by the non-governmental organization Foro Penal. CNN has not yet been able to confirm the death toll but has reached out to Venezuelan police.

Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab said 749 people had been detained in Monday’s protests. He rejected the notion that the demonstrations were peaceful and claimed 48 soldiers and police officers were injured.

Meanwhile, Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez called the protests an attempted coup and said the military reaffirmed its “absolute loyalty and unconditional support” to President Nicolas Maduro.

Sunday’s election, with Venezuela’s future at stake, is the most important in years.

Many young opposition supporters have said they would leave the country if autocratic leader Nicolas Maduro is re-elected, pointing to the devastating economic collapse and violent repression under his rule, but a thriving opposition party also poses the regime’s toughest challenge in 25 years.

President Maduro had promised fair and free elections, but the process has been tainted by allegations of fraud: opposition figures have been arrested, key opposition leaders have been barred from running, the media has been blacked out, and Venezuelans living abroad are largely unable to vote.

So even though Maduro was officially certified as the winner by the country’s electoral commission, made up of the president’s allies, the opposition rejected the results and other Latin American leaders also refused to acknowledge his victory.

Here’s what you need to know:

Maduro has been in power since the death of his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in 2013. If he were to be re-elected, it would be his third consecutive six-year term and a continuation of “Chavismo,” the left-wing populist ideology named after his former leader.

On the other hand, there is a unified opposition movement that has overcome divisions to form a coalition whose energetic campaign has stoked hope among a disillusioned Venezuelan population hungry for change in a country plunged into dire economic difficulties that have forced as many as 8 million Venezuelans to flee the country.

Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, a former diplomat, took the post after highly popular party leader Maria Corina Machado was barred from running following allegations that she had failed to list some meal vouchers on her asset declaration.

But many still see her as a driving force behind the opposition, which has pledged to restore democracy to Venezuela and rebuild its once-robust economy if it wins.

The results are disputed. Officially, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) declared Maduro the winner late Sunday after 80% of the votes had been counted. It said Maduro won 51.2% of the vote to Gonzalez’s 44.2%.

The CNE has yet to release the final vote tally.

But the opposition rejected the results, claiming their tally showed Gonzalez had won. On Monday, they announced they had access to more than 73% of the tallies and that Gonzalez had received more than 6 million votes to Maduro’s only 2.7 million.

Speaking in the capital, Caracas, Gonzalez and Machado said all results had been verified and shared online for citizens and world leaders to see – something world and opposition leaders had called for from the CNE.

Opposition leaders on Sunday accused the country of fraud as the votes were being processed and counted.

The opposition claimed its witnesses were denied access to the National Electoral Commission (CNE) headquarters during the vote count, as their presence was meant to ensure transparency and impartiality.

Only a limited number of election observers were allowed to monitor the vote, including the Carter Center, which called on CNE to release polling station-level results, saying the information was “critical to our assessment.”

The Carter Center’s preliminary report was scheduled to be released Tuesday morning, but a person familiar with the center’s plans said the center will cancel the release and withdraw all of its staff from the country. It is unclear when the report will be released.

The United Nations was also in attendance, and a UN spokesman said afterwards that Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had called for “full transparency” and for electoral bodies to “act independently and without interference to guarantee the free expression of the will of the electorate”.

The opposition also alleged that the CNE had stopped polling stations from transmitting data to a central authority, preventing further vote processing.

The government has faced accusations of vote fraud in the past, which it denies. The Maduro regime controls nearly all state institutions, including the CNE, which was accused of manipulating voter turnout in 2017 by a software company that provided voting technology. The CNE had previously denied the allegations.

CNN reached out to CNE for comment on Monday; the organization has not yet responded to the opposition’s allegations.

Maduro’s supporters celebrated his victory in parts of Caracas, but Monday was marked by broader opposition protests.

In Caracas, hundreds of people marched through the streets waving Venezuelan flags and chanting “Freedom!”

Videos from across the country, from Chararave to Caucaguita, show crowds banging pots, the noise heard from miles around the city. This Latin American custom is Cacerolazo A spontaneous, participatory form of protest also used in Chile and Spain.

A CNN crew saw dozens of National Guard troops in riot gear use tear gas and batons to quell the mostly peaceful protests.

“We want peace for Venezuela and for our families,” a protester, who asked not to be named, told a news team on the ground.

Gonzalez and Machado called for protests to continue on Tuesday.

President Maduro on Monday condemned the protests and said the government “knows how to deal with the situation and defeat those who are violent.”

He also claimed, without providing evidence, that most of the protesters were hateful criminals and that their plot was hatched in the United States.

For Venezuelans, this is distressingly familiar territory: Previous opposition protests, including in 2017 and 2019, have been met with harsh repression by police and military forces, long defenders of the Chavista regime.

Many regional and global leaders, including the United States, have cast doubt on the election results, but some of Venezuela’s partners support President Maduro.

“We have serious concerns that the announced election results do not reflect the will and vote of the Venezuelan people. It is critical that every vote is counted fairly and transparently, and that electoral authorities share this information immediately, without delay, with the opposition and independent observers,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters on Monday.

Similar concerns were expressed by foreign ministers and ministries of European countries, including the United Kingdom and Spain.

The electoral observation section of the Organization of American States (OAS) said the CNE’s election results could not be recognized due to a lack of transparency and evidence.

In its 23-page report, the OAS said the CNE did not provide details of the votes processed when it declared President Maduro the winner.

He said other factors made it impossible to give “democratic approval” to the official results, including the CNE’s resistance to domestic and international scrutiny, the reluctance of opposition witnesses to enter polling stations, and “inconsistencies between the announced percentages and the public verification process.”

The report accused the Maduro regime of politically persecuting opposition leaders, noting in particular that Machado had been disqualified as a candidate.

“The regime of Nicolás Maduro has once again betrayed the Venezuelan people by proclaiming that it respects the will of the people yet doing everything it can to manipulate and defy that will,” the report concludes.

The OAS said the report was based on primary and secondary sources, including direct conversations with key players in the process, findings collected by national observation initiatives and civil society organizations, and public information from political and organizational actors.

Other Latin American countries, including Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, have refused to recognise the results and expelled their diplomats from the countries on Monday.

The Maduro government denounced the countries as “a group of right-wing governments subservient to Washington that openly support the most despicable fascist ideological positions.”

Venezuela suspended commercial flights between Panama and the Dominican Republic late on Monday, with the transport minister saying the suspension was due to “rejection of the interventionist actions of the right-wing government.”

Maduro’s close allies, including China, Cuba, Iran and Russia, were quick to congratulate him.

Once Latin America’s fifth-largest economy, Venezuela has experienced the worst peacetime economic collapse of a country in recent history.

It comes as an economic and political crisis caused by a collapse in the price of oil, Venezuela’s main export, combines with chronic corruption and mismanagement among government officials.

Venezuela is currently plagued by chronic shortages of basic goods and soaring inflation that makes available goods too expensive for most, forcing millions to flee the country, including thousands who have made their way north to the southern border of the United States.

The United States and the European Union have imposed tough sanctions on Maduro’s government for years, but he says Venezuela is the victim of an “economic war” and blames his government for the crisis.

Maduro promised to hold fair and free elections in U.S.-brokered talks last year in exchange for sanctions relief, but allegations of fraud emerged after Sunday’s election, raising doubts about Venezuela’s ability to return to the international stage.