Caracas.- Thousands of people demonstrated in Caracas on Saturday waving flags and singing the national anthem in support of opposition candidate Edmundo González, who they say won the presidential election in a resounding manner, raising tensions in the South American country after an election in which the ruling party says President Nicolás Maduro triumphed.
Electoral authorities — allied with Maduro — have yet to present vote counts to prove that he won the July 28 election, despite growing demands from the international community to release the results. The ruling party also held its own rally to defend the president’s reelection.
The government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the election. The president and his entourage have also threatened to jail opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and Gonzalez, a former diplomat.
After midday, Machado arrived on the roof of a truck at the rally in the east of the capital, where she was greeted with the singing of the national anthem. The leader reappeared in public after announcing a few days ago that she was sheltering in place out of fear following the strong accusations and threats of arrest she received from the authorities.
“We have overcome all the barriers. We have torn them all down,” Machado assured the demonstrators, who cheered her on with applause and shouts of “freedom” and “until the end.”
“Today, fear is elsewhere because they know that there is a country determined to move forward,” said the opposition leader in a defiant tone, and assured that after the elections “the transition to democracy began in Venezuela. Ours is a civic and peaceful struggle, but it is not weak.” González, 74, was not present at the opposition rally.
At the end of the event, Machado got out of the truck and got on a motorcycle to quickly leave the place without any known destination.
The opposition protests were replicated in several towns in the interior of Venezuela and in some cities in the United States, Spain, Argentina, Panama, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, among others. In several of them, the Venezuelan community has grown following the massive migration triggered by the prolonged economic and social crisis.
The government also called on its supporters to carry out what it called the “mother of all marches” in Caracas to celebrate what it claims was Maduro’s re-election for a third term.
In recent days, the president has stepped up his attacks on the opposition, particularly Machado and González, whom he has blamed for the protests that broke out this week in Caracas and several cities in the interior, leaving 11 dead and 939 detained, including 90 teenagers, according to humanitarian organizations.
“We are winning and we will continue to win,” Maduro declared before several thousand supporters and public employees who gathered in the afternoon outside the presidential palace to celebrate his re-election.
The president downplayed the demands of opposition sectors that demand that the National Electoral Council publish the minutes of the vote count. They are only motivated by “hatred and revenge,” he said.
“Don’t fall into violence. Don’t let yourselves be dragged into coups. If you don’t want us, respect the rules of the game,” he said.
The protests erupted after the CNE, controlled by the ruling party, declared Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s presidential elections, which the opposition did not recognize and generated harsh criticism from the international community for a lack of transparency in the dissemination of the results.
The Organization of American States issued a call at the beginning of the day for the demonstrations to take place in peace and for “reconciliation and justice” in the country. “May every Venezuelan man, woman, who expresses himself in the street today (Saturday) find only an echo of peace, a peace that reflects the spirit of democratic coexistence,” it said.
The organization made its request days after it was unable to reach a consensus across the globe to pressure Venezuelan authorities to “immediately” publish and verify the election results that declared Maduro the winner.
The opposition on Friday released nearly 80% of the voting records, which they claim favor González.
An Associated Press analysis of nearly 24,000 images of voting records, representing results from 79 percent of the voting machines, found that Gonzalez received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the electoral body says Maduro got.
However, the updated results published on Friday by the CNE indicate that, based on the counting of 96.87% of the votes, Maduro had 6.4 million votes and González 5.3 million.
The opposition event on Saturday generated great expectations for the public reappearance of Machado, who became the main promoter of González’s candidacy after being disqualified for 15 years from holding public office.
The opposition leader said in an opinion piece published Thursday in the Wall Street Journal that she was under guard out of fear. Machado and Gonzalez had last appeared in public on Tuesday.
Thousands of protesters gathered early on Las Mercedes Avenue, a middle-class neighborhood in eastern Caracas, to participate in the rally called by the opposition in support of its candidate González.
In the middle of the crowd walked Carmen Elena García, a humble 57-year-old shopkeeper, who said she decided to go out and march “because we do not agree with them stealing our votes… I am going to fight until the end. They have to respect our votes.”
Holding a Venezuelan flag in her left hand, Ana Rosa López, a 61-year-old real estate agent, walked through the crowd. “I came with my daughter and my family to support this brave woman, María Corina,” said López, adding that she hoped the mobilization would serve to “enforce the right that González Urrutia won the election by a majority at all the polling stations. These things cannot be hidden.”
With a faltering voice and carrying a Venezuelan flag, Elizabeth Martinez, a domestic worker who attended the rally, said she was “on edge.”
“I can’t stand the situation in the country any longer,” the woman said. She added that she has thought about leaving, although it is hard for her to separate from her family.
Maduro denounced the existence of alleged groups that were preparing a “new ambush” for Saturday in a neighborhood in the east of the capital with grenades and other weapons, and ordered security forces to be on alert.
The worsening of the Venezuelan crisis has raised concerns in the international community, which has stepped up efforts to achieve a negotiated solution. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced on Friday that he had agreed with his counterparts from Brazil and Colombia that their respective foreign ministers would remain in “permanent communication” on the situation in Venezuela.
To date, at least seven countries in the Americas—the United States, Peru, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Argentina, Uruguay and Panama—have recognized González as the winner of the Venezuelan presidential elections.
On Saturday, Chilean Foreign Minister Alberto van Klaveren said that any proclamation of results in Venezuela in one direction or the other “is premature” because there has been no verification process, although he noted that Chile respects González and considers that “it is probable that he won the election,” although this cannot yet be said with certainty.
For her part, former Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner spoke from Mexico. She asked Maduro to publish the minutes “not only for the Venezuelan people, for the opposition, for democracy, for the legacy of Hugo Chávez himself,” but so that “everyone can scrutinize them, international public opinion, the opposition, the people of Venezuela.”
In other countries in the region, the Venezuelan exile community was supporting the demonstrations in support of the opposition. Several thousand Venezuelans in Argentina and hundreds in Chile took to the streets to demand freedom and to show their support for Gonzalez and Machado with Venezuelan flags painted on their faces and anti-Maduro banners.
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