Venezuela’s Contested Election Causes Widespread Protests

Venezuela was once among the wealthiest in South America but due to political turmoil and economic instability, the nation has suffered for over two decades. Due to the the socio-political crisis in Venezuela that took a turn for the worse in 2017, the South American country has seen an exodus of over 7 million citizens. As of Sunday, July 28, Venezuela has been in total uproar since their controversial Presidential elections. In the contentious race between current authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro and opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, who is backed by the opposition’s most popular leader María Corina Machado, both sides declared victory despite the Venezuelan electoral authority declaring that Maduro was the winner, Reuters reported. Since then, protests have erupted in the streets of Venezuela against what opposition leaders, international observers, and thousands of Venezuelans have claimed is a stolen presidential election.

In the lead up to the election on Sunday, emotions and anticipation were high, with Venezuelan voters lining up outside voting centers starting as early as 10 p.m. the night before despite years of perceived apathy and disillusionment. This election comes after a decade of turmoil marked by hyperinflation, repression, violence, and crime; during this time, the country has faced various national protest movements met with violent crackdowns as well as failed assassination attempts. Maduro, who has been the president of Venezuela for 12 years, is widely unpopular with Venezuelans from various different walks of life due to the years of censorship, political repression, economic chaos, and food and medicine shortages, which many say he is to blame for. Across the country, collectives, armed, pro-government groups and police forces tried blocking access to voting centers and provoking voters. Around 12:30 a.m., the National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Maduro loyalists, announced that the current president beat Gonzáles by a 51 percent to 44 percent margin, but the opposition and many international observers are disputing this win, Al Jazeera reported.

Machado called the results a gross disregard and violation of popular sovereignty, telling reporters that the opposition won and “the whole world knows it.” She also cited irregularities in the results, as despite the electoral council’s conviction that Maduro won the elections, it has declined to release any detailed ballot information to back up its numbers, and independent preelection polls and election-day quick counts showed González beating Maduro by a landslide. Machado and González both maintain that the opposition has 73 percent of the voting tallies from Sunday’s election, which they said show more than at least 6 million votes for Gonzalez and a little under 3 million for Maduro.

In Venezuela, voters use electronic machines that record their votes and provide them with a paper receipt showing who they voted for; these receipts are then deposited into ballot boxes before leaving the polling station. When the polls close, each machine prints a tally sheet listening the vote counts of both candidates. Maduro’s government has tight control over the voting system through CNE, and Venezuelan law states that opposition party representatives have a right to witness the voting process and obtain a copy of the final tally sheet from the machines. Despite this, many witnesses from the opposition say that they were blocked from following the counts, which echoes the experiences of international observers on Sunday, and the CNE did not release tallies from each of the 30,000 polling stations across Venezuela.

While this is not the first time the country has faced doubts over the fairness of their election process, it is the first time that the opposition has had proof of their claims and the first time they’ve had strong international backing for their claims. Several countries around the including Chile, Peru, the Dominican Republic, the United States, Ecuador, Argentina, Panama, El Salvador, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Uruguay, and Brazil have expressed concern about the legitimacy, credibility, and transparency of the country’s election results, while others like Russia, China, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Spain have supported Maduro’s claims of victory.

“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it publishes are difficult to believe,” Chilean President Gabriel Boric wrote on X, making it clear that his country will not recognize the “not verifiable” data.
”The international community and especially the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand total transparency of the electoral records and the process, and that international observers not compromised with the government account for the veracity of the results.”

Additionally, the United States affirmed the opposition and Venezuelan people’s claims on Thursday by saying that González defeated Maduro in the presidential elections, calling for negotiations to ensure a peaceful transition of power. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, though he did not say the United States was recognizing González as Venezuela’s president, congratulated the opposition candidate on his successful campaign.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Blinken said in a statement Thursday evening. “Now is the time for the Venezuelan parties to begin discussions on a respectful, peaceful transition in accordance with Venezuelan electoral law and the wishes of the Venezuelan people.”

Since the announcement on Monday, widespread anger and frustration has pushed thousands of Venezuelans to the streets in cities like Caracas, Coro, Barquisimeto, and Maracay, to protest what they consider to be a fraud by the regime and voice their opposition to Maduro and his government, with large crowds waving Venezuelan flags and chanting ”Liberty!” and “We are not afraid!”

Most surprising is the growing protests in the Petare area, one of the poorest barrios of Caracas, which has historically been supportive of former president Chavez and, up until now, Maduro. Multiple statues of the infamous former president Hugo Chávez have been toppled throughout these protests, beginning in Coro, the capital of the state of Falcon. In response, police and security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters in the Capital city of Caracas.

The Venezuela Conflict Observatory, a local monitoring group, said in a press release that it registered more than 300 citizen demonstrations in all states of Venezuela since the evening of July 28, condemning “the escalation of repression and violence against peaceful demonstrations by people demanding transparency and credible information on the results…”

According to Venezuela-based human rights agency Foro Penal, more than 1,000 people have been detained and at least 16 people have been killed in clashes between protesters and security forces. In response to the massive protests, Maduro has dismissed international criticism about the results of the elections and alleges that Venezuela is the target of an attempted “coup d’etat” of a “fascist and counter-revolutionary” nature. In an Instagram post, he called protesters “violent agitators and terrorists” and has gone so far as to directly blame González for the government’s response:

“I hold [Gonzalez] responsible for everything that is happening in Venezuela, criminal violence … the wounded, the dead, the destruction,” said the Venezuelan leader in a joint state council meeting. Ahead of the elections, Maduro warned of a “bloodbath” if he was not elected on July 28.

The election observation department of the Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) issued a statement saying that Maduro’s claims of victory “deserve neither to be trusted nor to be democratically recognized,” adding that the Venezuelan regime has “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 organization called for an extraordinary meeting on Wednesday to address the results of the elections.

Though the body attempted to approve a resolution requiring Maduro to make voting records public, only 17 of the 18 votes needed were cast. The 17 votes in favor came from Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Haití, Jamaica, Panamá, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Suriname, and Uruguay. Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Grenada, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia, and Antigua and Barbuda abstained from the vote, and Dominica, Mexico, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago were not at the session.

United Nations agencies have called the mass migration of citizens from the South American country “the second largest displacement in the world,” with Venezuelans fleeing to Latin American countries like Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Chile, as well as countries like the United States, Spain, Canada, and more. United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk raised concerns this week about “reports of disproportionate use of force by law enforcement officials along with violence by by armed individuals supporting the government, known as colectivos.”

“Those responsible for human rights violations must be held to account,” Turk said in a statement. “I urge the authorities to respect the rights of all Venezuelans to assemble and protest peacefully and express their views freely and without fear.”