Venezuela | Opposition demonstrates to claim victory

(Caracas) Several thousand supporters of the Venezuelan opposition, led by their leader, demonstrated Saturday in Caracas to contest the re-election of President Nicolas Maduro, whose supporters plan to “celebrate the victory” in a country under strong international pressure.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who had said she was “hiding” and fearing for her life, appeared at midday on a truck bearing the words “Venezuela has won.” She was greeted by thousands of supporters shouting “Freedom!”

M^me Machado, declared ineligible by the government, was unable to run in the July 28 election. She was replaced at short notice by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who was not present on Saturday at the rally called in an upscale neighborhood in the east of the capital, surrounded by a discreet police deployment.

“We are not terrorists. We will go all the way” is the message written on a small placard held up by Jezzy Ramos, 36, a cook and mother of one daughter, repeating the words “all the way” which are one of the opposition’s slogans. “This dictatorship will fall,” she assures AFP.

The spectre of the wave of repression of 2017, which left around a hundred dead, already under Nicolas Maduro, and the mobilisation of the security apparatus since the election, however, provoke a clear fear.

Sonell Molina, 55, a mother of two who moved to Peru, says they are “worried” about her and advise her to leave. “I’m not going to leave my country,” she says, explaining that she came “to defend democracy and the vote.”

In the rest of the city, the streets were largely deserted.

The government supporters planned to leave the city centre and march to the presidential palace in the afternoon.

It must be “the mother” of “all marches to celebrate victory”, according to the head of state, heir to the socialist leader Hugo Chavez and since 2013 at the head of a country plunged into an unprecedented economic crisis.

Unsurprisingly, the electoral authority confirmed on Friday the re-election of Mr. Maduro for a third term until 2031, with 52% of the votes against Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia (43%), without giving the detailed results.

“We won!” Maria Corina Machado replied on X. “We have the evidence and the world already recognizes it,” said the opponent, who considers the official results a “farce.”

According to the opposition’s tally, Mr Gonzalez received 67% of the vote.

“Cursed” Maria

At least 11 civilians and one soldier were killed and more than 1,200 people arrested during spontaneous protests that broke out across the country in the two days following the vote.

The opposition, which has denounced “brutal repression”, speaks of 20 deaths and 11 forced disappearances.

On Friday, it denounced the ransacking of its headquarters in Caracas during the night by a group of armed and hooded men, as well as the “arbitrary detention” of one of its leaders, the journalist Roland Carreño, arrested in the capital.

For his part, Mr. Maduro once again vehemently attacked his adversaries, this “assassinator of Gonzalez” and the “cursed Maria” Machado, whom he had already threatened to imprison.

During a press conference at the presidential palace, he accused his rivals of preparing attacks against the police during Saturday’s marches.

Returning to the protests that followed the election, he again condemned a “premeditated plan” by “fascists”, “criminals and drug addicts” who attacked the “symbols of Bolivarian Chavism”.

International pressure

Nicolas Maduro has continued to deride the “coup d’état” led according to him “by the United States and the international extreme right” since his contested re-election.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who expressed “concern” about Mr.^me Machado and Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia, during a discussion with them on Friday, acknowledged the opposition’s victory on Thursday, arguing that there was “indisputable evidence.”

Following this declaration, five Latin American countries on Friday recognized the election of the opponent, also speaking of “indisputable proof” of his victory.

Peru was the first country on Tuesday to prompt Caracas to break off diplomatic relations with Lima.

On the other hand, Nicaragua, one of the faithful allies of the Chavista power along with Russia and Iran in particular, recognized Mr. Maduro’s victory.

The Venezuelan president “thanked” the presidents of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, and of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who “are working together so that Venezuela is respected and that the United States does not do what they are doing,” in the words of Mr. Maduro.

These three countries, which maintain good relations with Chavist Venezuela, have requested “an impartial verification of the results” of the election.