CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuela's opposition and President Nicolas Maduro's government are locked in a high-stakes standoff after each side claimed victory in Sunday's presidential election that millions in the long-suffering country saw as their best chance to end 25 years of one-party rule.
Several foreign governments, including the United States, delayed certifying the results after electoral officials delayed releasing detailed vote counts after declaring Maduro the winner with 51 percent of the vote and retired diplomat Edmundo Gonzalez with 44 percent.
“The Venezuelan people and the whole world know what happened,” Gonzalez said.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, attending from Tokyo, said the United States has serious concerns that the announced results do not reflect the will and vote of the Venezuelan people.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has announced are hard to believe,” Chile's leftist leader Gabriel Boric said.
Meanwhile, in the streets of Caracas, a mix of anger, tears and loud banging of pots erupted as the results were announced by the National Electoral Council, controlled by President Maduro.
“This can't happen,” Ayari Padron said, wiping away tears. “It's humiliating.”
Voters lined up before dawn on Sunday to cast their ballots, raising opposition hopes that they can undermine President Maduro's power base.
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The official results came as a shock to opposition members who had celebrated online and outside some polling stations in what they believed to be a landslide victory for Gonzalez.
“I'm very happy,” said Merling Fernandez, 31, a banker, as opposition representatives emerged from a polling station in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce the results, showing Gonzalez had more than doubled Maduro's votes. Dozens of people nearby broke out into an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, fighting back tears. “We are all tired of this bondage.”
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado He said Gonzalez's margin of victory was “overwhelming,” based on vote tallies the campaign received from delegates placed at about 40% of the ballot boxes.
Authorities delayed the release of results from 30,000 polling stations across the country, promising only that it would happen “within the next few hours,” thwarting attempts to verify the results.
Mr. Gonzalez was the opposition's most unlikely figure: a retired diplomat, 74, who was little known 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.
The delay in announcing the winner, six hours after polls were scheduled to close, signaled fierce debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro's opponents declared victory earlier in the evening.
After ultimately declaring victory, President Maduro accused unidentified foreign adversaries of trying to hack the voting system.
“This is not the first time they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he told several hundred supporters at the presidential palace, without providing evidence to back up his claims, but promising “justice” to those who try to foment violence in Venezuela.
The election will have ripple effects across the Americas, with opponents and supporters alike signaling that if Maduro wins another six-year term, they will join the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left the country to seek opportunities abroad.
Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with the 70th birthday of Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist firebrand who betrayed the Bolivarian Revolution to Maduro, who died of cancer in 2013. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela have suppressed wages, stoked hunger, crippled the oil industry and Separating Families For migration.
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 had been barred from running for any public office for 15 years by the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court. The former lawmaker won a landslide victory in opposition primary elections in October with 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 also barred him from registering. So Gonzalez, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves and was once Latin America's most advanced economy, but it has plummeted since Maduro came to power. Plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation of more than 130,000 percent first sparked social unrest and then mass migration.
Economic sanctions U.S. attempts to remove Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election – which the U.S. and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate – only deepened the crisis.
Maduro has touted economic stability as a key driver of voters in the election, 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 among Latin American countries.
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 jobA basket of basic groceries enough to feed a family of four for a month costs an estimated $385.
The opposition has sought to exploit the vast inequalities that have resulted from a crisis that has seen Venezuelans abandon their national currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
Messrs. Gonzalez and Machado focused their campaigns in Venezuela's vast interior, which has not 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.
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Associated Press writer Fabiola Sanchez contributed to this report.
