Updated July 30, 2024 at 20:19 PM ET
CARACAS, Venezuela, and BOGOTÁ, Colombia — For a second straight day Venezuelans poured into the streets to protest what increasingly appears to be a stolen presidential election, but the defense minister pledged to crackdown on dissent and vowed loyalty to authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro.
Addressing a huge outdoor rally in Caracas, opposition leader María Corina Machado said her movement had obtained 84% of the voter tally sheets from Sunday’s balloting which showed that retired diplomat Edmundo González had won in a landslide. González, she said, had received more than 7 million votes compared to 3.2 million for Maduro.
“This is irrefutable proof that we won,” said Machado, who was replaced on Sunday’s ballot by González after she was banned from running by the Maduro regime. “We not only won. We destroyed them.”
On Monday, the National Electoral Council declared that Maduro had won a third term, beating González by a 51% to 44% margin. However, the electoral council — which like most government institutions is controlled by the ruling Socialist Party — has declined to release any detailed ballot information to back up its numbers. Preelection polls as well as election-day quick counts and exit surveys showed González with a huge lead.
As a result, allegations of fraud are multiplying and Venezuelans as well as foreign governments are calling on Maduro to release the official tally sheets from the more than 30,000 voting machines. Celso Amorim, an envoy for the leftwing government of Brazil, met with Maduro Monday and said the strongman had promised to release official data on the election.
“He said this would happen in a short period of time, from what I understood,” Amorim told the Financial Times.
Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva spoke with President Biden on Tuesday. Both agreed that the Venezuelan electoral authorities needed to release the polling data. According to a White House statement, they also agreed that the outcome of the Venezuelan election “represents a critical moment for democracy in the hemisphere.”
In the meantime, the Organization of American States issued a scathing report saying Maduro’s claims of victory “deserve neither to be trusted nor to be democratically recognized.”
“Nicolás Maduro’s regime has once again betrayed the Venezuelan people by promising to respect popular will when, at the same time, doing everything possible to manipulate and ignore that will,” the report said.
On Tuesday, the opposition urged Venezuela’s armed forces, which are key to propping up Maduro, to break with him. Maduro has led Venezuela into its worst economic meltdown in history and has nearly destroyed the country’s democracy during his 11 years in power, a crisis that has also impacted military families. Soldiers have the right to vote and many are thought to have cast ballots for González.
Referring to the massive turnout in Sunday’s voting, Machado said in her speech: “Soldiers saw with their own eyes the country’s triumph over tyranny.”
González added: “We insist that our armed forces respect the will of the people… You know what happened on Sunday.”
But in a televised speech, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said it was time for Venezuelans to rally behind the homeland and the government. Wearing an olive-green uniform and field cap and standing before rows of military officers, he said: “We confirm our absolute loyalty and unconditional support for President Nicolás Maduro, our legitimately elected commander in chief.”
Padrino López called the protesters coup-plotters allied with foreign enemies of Venezuela and warned: “We will take forceful action… to maintain internal order.”
Maduro himself made similar threats on Tuesday. "I hold you, González, responsible for everything that is happening in Venezuela: the criminal violence, the delinquents, the injuries, the deaths and the destruction. You are directly responsible as are you Machado, and there has to be justice. Because these things, this attack on the people, must not happen again in Venezuela."
By Tuesday evening Maduro took to the balcony of the Miraflores Presidential Palace in Caracas to address his supporters. But the past two days have been dominated by protests against the official results.
The demonstrations began Monday with people marching on government buildings, ripping down billboards with Maduro’s image and destroying at least five statues of his mentor, the late Hugo Chávez who founded Venezuela’s socialist revolution 25 years ago.
Six people were killed in clashes with security forces who arrested 132 protesters, said Alfredo Romero, president of the Caracas human rights group Foro Penal. Among the detainees was Freddy Superlano, a former state governor and opposition leader.
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