On Monday, July 29th, Maria Corina Machado, the leader of the opposition party in Venezuela, announced that their electoral team had obtained evidence proving that the party had received 73.2% of the votes in Sunday’s election. She claimed that the party had achieved an “irreversible victory” in this election.
Earlier that day, the National Electoral Council of Venezuela announced that the incumbent president, Nicolas Maduro, who had been in power for over 11 years, had won the election with over 51% of the votes. Subsequently, tens of thousands of Venezuelan citizens across the country staged protests, condemning the authorities for manipulating the election results.
Following the announcement of Maduro’s victory, protesters quickly gathered. Opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez and Machado urged the public to remain calm and invited supporters to gather peacefully on Tuesday morning to celebrate the election results.
Outside the campaign headquarters in the capital, Caracas, Gonzalez addressed supporters, saying, “A free nation is a respected nation, and we will fight for our freedom. Dear friends, I understand your anger, but the response from our democratic sector is calm and firm.”
Gonzalez stated, “I tell you with real calmness, the ballot papers in our hands prove our absolute and irreversible victory in numbers.”
Machado mentioned that the ballots showed that Maduro and Gonzalez received over 2.75 million and approximately 6.27 million votes, respectively.
They made these statements after the National Electoral Council of Venezuela, which is loyal to the Maduro government, officially declared Maduro as the winner following his third consecutive six-year term victory.
In the capital, most of the protest activities proceeded peacefully, but clashes erupted when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked a large van. The police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, and some protesters threw stones and other objects at the police stationed on a main road in a high-end residential area.
As the protesters passed through the financial district of the city, a man fired a gun, but there were no casualties reported. In the impoverished neighborhood of Petare in the capital, people began chanting anti-Maduro slogans while some masked young individuals tore down campaign posters of Maduro hanging on lampposts. Armed security forces stood outside a few blocks away from the protest activities.
As the crowd moved through another neighborhood, pedestrians on the side of the road cheered for the protesters, banging pots, recording the protests on their phones to show support. Some continuously shouted “freedom” and cursed at Maduro.
Since 2014, the opposition has failed to overthrow Maduro’s regime in three massive protest demonstrations, and now they are pinning their hopes on the ballot box.
Voters started queuing up to vote as early as Saturday evening.
Venezuelans used electronic voting machines to vote and record the voting status, providing each voter with a paper receipt showing their chosen candidate. Voters deposited the receipt into the ballot box before leaving the polling station.
After voting ended, each machine printed a ballot showing the candidate’s name and their votes. Nonetheless, the ruling party tightly controlled the voting system through a five-member electoral council loyal to Maduro and a network of party coordinators who had been working in the area for a long time. These coordinators had almost unrestricted access to and from the polling centers.
These coordinators received government benefits, including food subsidies, and prevented representatives of the opposition from entering the polling centers to observe the voting process and the vote counting results, particularly blocking them from obtaining copies of the final count results from the voting machines.
As of Monday night, the election authorities had not yet released the results from 30,000 voting machines. The electoral institution’s website had crashed, and it remains uncertain when the counting results will be provided.
The Electoral Council’s declaration of Maduro’s victory left many Venezuelans shocked, especially after they had been celebrating Gonzalez’s overwhelming victory both online and outside some polling stations.
Independent exit polls had shown that 65% of voters supported Gonzalez, while 14% to 31% supported Maduro.
Independent election monitoring agencies deemed these results suspicious. Opposition leaders, foreign observers, and the European Union openly urged the electoral authorities to promptly disclose the counting results.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs were quick to congratulate Maduro on his reelection. However, some Western governments, including the United States and the European Union, have not recognized the election results.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric labeled the results as “unbelievable.” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated that Washington was “gravely concerned” that the announced results did not reflect the actual votes or the will of the people.
In response to criticism and questioning from other governments, the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry announced the recall of its diplomatic personnel from seven countries in the Americas, including Panama, Argentina, and Chile. Foreign Minister Ivan Gil requested the governments of these countries also recall their diplomatic personnel stationed in Venezuela.
Venezuela, with the world’s largest oil reserves, was once one of Latin America’s most developed economies. However, after Maduro came to power in 2013, he implemented authoritarian methods to rule Venezuela with an iron fist. Coupled with long-standing corruption and poor governance, the country’s economy plummeted, exacerbated by the sharp drop in oil prices, widespread shortages of basic commodities, and a staggering hyperinflation rate of up to 130,000%.
Following Maduro’s reelection in 2018, dozens of countries condemned the continuity of his rule as illegitimate, with the United States imposing oil sanctions in an attempt to force Maduro out of office.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency, since 2014, over 7.7 million people have been forcibly displaced from the country, marking one of the largest displacement events in modern history.
(This article referenced relevant reports from the Associated Press and Reuters)