Protests broke out across Venezuela against authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro’s disputed re-election, as the government threatened to crack down on opposition leaders and the international community called for a breakdown of poll results.
Maduro’s victory, which was announced on Monday, has been challenged by the opposition’s candidate Edmundo González. González, a retired diplomat, led Maduro by at least 20 points in independent polls and had a clear lead in exit surveys and quick counts on Sunday.
By the afternoon, people in a number of neighbourhoods across Caracas were shouting “Fraud!” and banging pots and pans from their windows in protest. Disturbances were reported in poorer neighbourhoods as well as middle-class areas, while demonstrators set up a roadblock of burning tyres on the edge of the city on the road to the airport in nearby La Guaira.
Protesters marched across the city towards the centre and the Miraflores presidential palace. Many were carrying Venezuelan flags and some had their faces masked and were carrying large wooden sticks. Police responded by firing tear gas in some areas. In Santa Capilla, a few blocks from the palace, men in plain clothes were firing pistols towards demonstrators, according to videos shared on social media.
“We’re fed up. We want a change,” said Leydis Mojares, 33, one of the marchers. “We want a better life for our children. Maduro isn’t our president any more. The result last night was such a disappointment . . . I cried, I screamed. I saw my daughter, who is 13, crying. I said to her, ‘How long is this going to go on for?’”
Video shared on social media showed protesters in the town of Coro, in north-western Venezuela, toppling a statue of Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez, as crowds cheered them on. Maduro had called Sunday’s election on what would have been Chávez’s 70th birthday.
The dispute over the election has divided the international community, with Maduro’s close allies Russia, China, Iran and Cuba hailing his victory while the US, the EU and the UK demanded to see a detailed breakdown of voting.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) said Maduro had won with 51.2 per cent of the vote compared with González’s 44.2 per cent, with 80 per cent counted. It ignored calls to publish a detailed tally and instead organised a ceremony to proclaim him president until 2031.
After his victory was certified, Maduro, a former bus driver and union activist, delivered a pugnacious 90-minute speech. “Yesterday Venezuela fought and definitively defeated fascism, hatred and demons in these lands,” he said.
The opposition said its parallel count showed González winning. Opposition representatives said in many polling stations, soldiers had removed ballot boxes and tallies of results, instead of providing copies to party witnesses, as required by law. The CNE website, where results are usually published, was down, which officials said was the result of an ongoing cyber attack.
González stood in the place of María Corina Machado, who was disqualified in January from running in the election by the Supreme Court. She campaigned on González’s behalf, holding rallies across the country.
On Monday, Venezuelan attorney-general Tarek William Saab accused Machado of involvement in an alleged cyber attack on the country’s electoral system, alongside two opposition leaders living in exile. He also warned that “acts of violence and calls that challenge electoral results” are punishable with imprisonment of three to six years.
Maduro’s disputed election victory poses a dilemma for the Biden administration, which had negotiated with Maduro to run a competitive election and temporarily relaxed sanctions on state-owned oil company PDVSA in October.
The US reimposed the oil sanctions in April, though it has granted licences giving exemptions to individual companies, including Chevron, Maurel & Prom and Repsol, to continue operating in Venezuela.
Senior US administration officials said on Monday afternoon that Washington was yet to make a decision on possible sanctions in response. “It is not currently under consideration that we would retroactively alter licences that have previously been given,” one official said.
Another senior official balked at the suggestion that Washington’s Venezuela policy had been a failure, citing the release of US nationals from Venezuelan jails and the fact that the election was held at all. “We’re in a much better position now than we were three years ago,” he said.
Eric Farnsworth, vice-president of the Council of Americas, a business lobby, said there were not many good options for the US as Washington was preoccupied with its own election and “loath to take on another messy global crisis”.
Maduro’s disputed re-election is likely to complicate the oil-rich country’s economy, which, buoyed by a relaxation of price and currency controls, has seen a slight recovery after contracting by three-quarters between 2013 and 2021. The country has faced hyperinflation, regular power outages and shortages of food and medicines. Some 7.7mn Venezuelans — about a quarter of the population — have fled.
Venezuela’s debt slipped by more than a cent in secondary market trading on Monday as investors expressed concerns that the result would complicate efforts to restructure about $160bn of bonds.