Protests break out as Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuela election

Protests break out as Maduro declared winner of disputed Venezuela election

Venezuelans have taken to the streets after the electoral authority officially declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of an election that the opposition says was marred by fraud.

Protests have erupted across the country, with demonstrators even toppling a statue of Maduro’s predecessor, Hugo Chavez, in the state of Falcon.

In the Petare area — one of the poorest parts of the capital, Caracas — demonstrators shouted slogans against the president, and some masked young people tore down his campaign posters from lampposts.

Some protesters were also headed towards Miraflores, the presidential palace.

Police were deployed in large numbers across the city, and members of the National Guard were seen to be firing tear gas to disperse demonstrators. There were also reports of “colectivos” — pro-Maduro paramilitary groups — firing at protesters.

“It’s going to fall. It’s going to fall. This government is going fall!” some of the protesters shouted.

Public anger swelled after the National Electoral Council (CNE) on Monday formally confirmed that Maduro had been re-elected by a majority of Venezuelans to another six-year term as president “for the period 2025-2031”.

But the CNE, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, has not released the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling stations across Venezuela, fuelling political tensions in the South American nation and calls for greater transparency.

Opposition representatives said the counts they collected from campaign representatives at the centres show presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez trouncing Maduro.

In a press conference on Monday evening, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado claimed her coalition had more than 70 percent of the votes tallied and catalogued in an online database.

‘They robbed us’

Maduro, who first came to power in 2013 after the death of his mentor and predecessor Chavez, has presided over an economic collapse that has pushed millions of people to leave the country.

Venezuela also has been isolated internationally amid sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and others, which have crippled an already struggling oil industry.

Reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Al Jazeera’s Teresa Bo said there was an immediate sense of disappointment amongst Venezuelans “who were hoping for change” at the ballot box on Sunday.

Many also expressed anger over the election results and how they were announced.

“What we saw happening on Sunday night is unprecedented in Venezuela. It was about one o’clock in the morning, on Monday morning, and the president of the electoral council came out and announced that Nicolas Maduro was the winner,” Bo noted.

“However, he never showed the results. We have never seen something like this.”

Venezuela’s Attorney General Tarek Saab, a Maduro ally, said on Monday that his office had launched an investigation into an alleged cyber attack on the electoral system that slowed the vote count.

Saab accused opposition leaders – including Machado – of being involved, but did not offer any evidence to back up his claim.

“What we’re seeing from the government right now is a government that is saying it won the elections, saying that it’s under attack,” Bo reported.

“This is not what people on the streets are saying. Millions of Venezuelans are convinced that there was massive fraud.”

On Monday morning, a cacophony of banging came from Caracas’s Petare and 23 de Enero areas – traditionally major working-class bastions for the United Socialist Party – as neighbours took part in a “cacerolazo”, a traditional Latin American protest in which people bang pots and pans.

“Maduro yesterday shattered my greatest dream, to see my only daughter again, who went to Argentina three years ago,” retiree Dalia Romero, 59, told the Reuters news agency in Maracaibo, a city in northwestern Venezuela.

“I stayed here alone with breast cancer so that she could work there and send me money for treatment,” she said through tears. “Now I know that I’m going to die alone without seeing her again.”

Emergency meeting requested

Meanwhile, nine Latin American countries have called for an emergency meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) permanent council due to their concerns over the election results.

Panama, one of the countries, also said it would be putting its diplomatic relations with Venezuela “on hold” and would withdraw diplomatic staff from the country until a full review is conducted.

“We are putting diplomatic relations on hold until a complete review of the voting records and of the voting computer system is carried out,” Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino said during a news conference.

Al Jazeera’s Bo explained that the call for an OAS meeting was unsurprising, as the governments involved are largely “right-wing governments [that] have traditionally opposed Venezuela”.

Instead, she said “all eyes right now are on what left-wing or centre-left-wing governments in the region will say” about the results.

On Monday morning, the government of left-wing Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the “impartial verification” of the results.

Gabriel Boric, the left-wing president of Chile, said his government would “not recognise any result that is not verifiable”, urging Venezuela to provide “total transparency of the election records and the process”.

In response to the international outcry, Maduro announced it would withdraw its diplomats from seven Latin American countries, including Panama, Peru, Chile and Argentina.

Opposition leaders also accused Maduro’s allies of attempting to surround the Argentinian embassy in Caracas, where certain political figures had taken refuge.

Eric Farnsworth, the vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas (AS/COA), told Al Jazeera that the international community ultimately has relatively little power over what happens next with the election results

“The reality is, he [Maduro] does control the courts. He controls the electoral system,” Farnsworth explained, adding that Maduro also has good relations with the military.

“So there’s not a whole lot of leverage that the international community maintains at this point in terms of Venezuela, particularly when we understand that there are some countries around the region, such as Cuba, and around the world, like China, which continue to support the Maduro regime.”

Still, Farnsworth said international pressure could help defuse a potentially volatile situation — and ensure the safety of key members of the opposition.

“We have to be really careful that this does not get out of control, and I think the international community really has a role to play in saying, ‘Look, just because somebody ran for president does not put a target on their back.’ Their lives and their families need to be protected.”

He also anticipates the election crisis will trigger another exodus from Venezuela, as people seek economic stability and political freedom elsewhere.

“If you take hope away from those who have remained, they really face a question: Is it worth it to stay in Venezuela? Or should they seek their fortunes elsewhere?”