Caracas, Venezuela
CNN
—
Protests erupted in several Venezuelan cities on Monday after the country's electoral commission officially declared authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro the winner of a presidential election marred by allegations of fraud.
In the capital, Caracas, security forces used tear gas to disperse large crowds of demonstrators, while crowds of people were seen banging pots and pans in main streets amid growing anger over Maduro's victory on Sunday. Venezuelan human rights group PROVEA said gunmen loyal to Maduro opened fire on peaceful protesters on Urdaneta Avenue.
Protests were reported in other cities, including Maracay, where opposition activist Estefania Natera told CNN that people were in the streets “to shout and demand that the truth be told, because we know the real outcome.” In the coastal state of Falcón, social media videos showed demonstrators toppling a statue of President Maduro.
Analysts say widespread protests against the government could spark a new wave of unrest in the country, where street demonstrations in recent years have been put down by the country's military, a longtime supporter of Maduro and his predecessor, the late President Hugo Chavez.
“The government knows how to rise to the occasion and defeat the violent ones,” Maduro said on Monday night, alleging without evidence that most of the protesters are hateful criminals and that their plot was hatched in the United States.
Maduro was officially declared the winner in a ceremony earlier in the day by the National Electoral Commission (CNE), made up of his supporters, but the commission has yet to release a final vote count from Sunday's election.
Matthias Delacroix/AP
Police hurled gas canisters at demonstrators in Caracas on July 29, protesting against official election results that declared President Nicolas Maduro re-elected, the day after the vote.
“Venezuela has the best electoral system in the world!” CNE President Elvis Amoroso declared before the official announcement.
But allegations of fraud have swirled in the vote. The opposition says its witnesses were denied access to the headquarters of the National Electoral Commission (CNE) during the vote count, and alleges that electoral authorities blocked the further processing of the vote. The government has been accused of voter fraud in the past, which it denies.
The Maduro regime controls nearly all state institutions, including the CNE, which was accused in 2017 by a software company that provided voting technology of manipulating voter turnout – a charge it has previously denied.
An opposition coalition led by Maria Corina Machado has denied Maduro's victory, and Machado and opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez have claimed their campaigns have gathered enough votes to certify Gonzalez's victory. On Monday, they announced they had received more than 73% of the votes tallied, more than 6 million for Gonzalez and just 2.7 million for Maduro.
“I speak to you from a position of calm and truth and I want to assure you that we will respect, responsibly, the will expressed yesterday,” Gonzalez said Monday at his campaign headquarters in Caracas.
“All the tallies have been verified, added up, scanned and digitized and then uploaded to a robust web portal,” Machado said, adding that “several world leaders are monitoring the portal.”
They called for further nationwide demonstrations on Tuesday.
In response, Jorge Rodriguez, a member of the Venezuelan National Assembly (an institution loyal to President Maduro), said that the latest results from the CNE, with 80% of the votes already counted, showed President Maduro leading with 51.2% of the votes, followed by President Edmundo with 44.2%.
Machado and Gonzalez are part of the United Opposition Movement, which overcame divisions to form a coalition known as the Platform for Democratic Unity. The dynamic movement recorded strong poll numbers before Sunday's vote and was seen as the biggest challenge to Maduro's government.
Matthias Delacroix/AP
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, accompanied by his wife Cilia Flores, arrived at a ceremony where the National Electoral Commission (CNE) certified his victory in the presidential elections.
The United States is among a number of regional leaders, including Peru and Chile, to question the validity of the results.
The United States on Monday joined Venezuelan civil society groups and opposition parties in calling on the Venezuelan government to “immediately” release concrete data on the presidential election, citing concerns about the credibility of President Maduro's victory.
Brazil, a key regional player, was calmer in tone but said it was waiting for “the publication by the National Electoral Commission of the data disaggregated by polling station, a vital step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election results,” according to a foreign ministry statement.
Meanwhile, the Venezuelan government announced it would expel diplomats from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay, calling them “right-wing governments subservient to Washington” that lean towards “the most despicable fascist ideological positions.”
Only a limited number of election observers were allowed to monitor the vote, including from the Carter Center and the United Nations, and they called on the country's National Electoral Commission (CNE) to release polling station-level results.
“The Carter Center has a huge responsibility,” Laura Cristina Dib, Venezuela program director for the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), told CNN, explaining that the center is the only international technical observation mission that can issue a public report on the results, although it's unclear when that will be done.
Matthias Delacroix/AP
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado (right) and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez hold a press conference after electoral authorities declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of the presidential election in Caracas on July 29.
Senior Biden administration officials said Venezuela's electoral authorities must release “detailed precinct-level results” of the election. One official said the data is required by Venezuelan law and should be made public immediately. Another official said if the results are credible, “this is a very simple thing that the authorities should be able to do easily.”
The officials gave no details about what steps the United States or the international community might be prepared to take if Venezuelan authorities do not release the data or if the results are deemed fraudulent, but did not rule out the possibility of sanctions.
U.S. sanctions against Venezuela were first imposed in 2017 and gradually tightened over the following years as the South American country's political crisis deepened.
Maduro promised to hold free and fair elections in U.S.-brokered talks last year in exchange for sanctions relief, but the opposition's accusations have cast doubt on Venezuela's return to the international stage.
The outcome of this vote is expected to have migration implications across the Americas, including the United States.
Under Maduro, unprecedented poverty and economic mismanagement have driven up to eight million Venezuelans to flee the country, including thousands traveling north to the southern border of the U.S. A June poll estimated that up to a third of Venezuelans would consider leaving the country after the election if Maduro remains in power.
This situation “could be a really bad October surprise for Democrats” in the upcoming US presidential election, according to Will Freeman, a Latin America fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images
On July 29, 2024, people opposed to the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro protested in Caracas.
If Maduro takes office in January next year, it will be his third consecutive six-year term and will see the continuation of “Chavezism,” the left-wing populist ideology named after Chavez.
Chavez ruled Venezuela for 14 years until his death in 2013. His policies were centered on nationalization and redistribution of the country's vast oil wealth to the poorest and most marginalized groups, as well as a relentless effort to defend Venezuela's sovereignty against “imperialist” powers.
But the oil-rich country has been going through its worst peacetime economic crisis in recent years, with Maduro blaming foreign sanctions against his government and saying Venezuela is the victim of an “economic war.”
An election defeat could be devastating for Maduro, who is facing drug trafficking and corruption charges in the United States and is under investigation for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court. Giving up power could mean imprisonment.
Venezuela's prosecutor's office said Monday it was investigating allegations of attempts to disrupt Sunday's presidential election, without presenting any evidence.
“There was an attack on the National Electoral Commission's power system and a cyber attack on its data transmission system,” Attorney General Tarek William Saab said, repeating Maduro's claims.
The strongman leader has allies on the international stage, including Russia, China, Nicaragua, Cuba and Honduras, whose officials congratulated Maduro on his victory.
“I am sure that your work as head of state will continue to contribute to their progressive development in all directions,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a social media post.
“Remember, on Russian soil you are always a welcome guest.”
Journalists Mary Trinity Mena and CNN's Michael Rios, Ivana Kottasova and Jesse Yang contributed to this report.
