Almost a week after the elections, the opposition and Chavismo called on citizens to come together to defend the results they respectively consider valid. Thousands of people took to the streets. Both the demonstration called by the opposition and the “mother of marches” by Nicolás Maduro brought together tens of thousands of people who marched through the streets of the capital and several Venezuelan cities, demonstrating the deep divisions of the population.
In one of the events following his proclamation as president, Maduro called on the population to be the “mother of the marches.” This demonstration, for which he also announced a “concert for peace,” was scheduled for Saturday afternoon, although from the morning onwards motorized people could be seen taking to the streets in several cities in support of the Chavista leader.
According to reports in the Venezuelan media, one of these groups gathered in the city of Cumaná, in the state of Sucre, and They fired tear gas at the population who also spoke out in favor of the opposition.
In the early afternoon, another group of hundreds of people began walking through the streets of Caracas on motorcycles and on foot, towards the Miraflores Palace, in a march that Maduro assured after 5 p.m. that it covered “more than eight kilometers.”
“I can say now that Venezuela is at peace. No one will be able to impose scenarios of violence. There will be an ambush and every ambush will have a reaction. No one will impose coup scenarios,” the president told the population.
“Some believed without seeing. I told them: the far right is hatred, violence, revenge, foreign interventionism and war,” he declared, later repeating what he had already said in other of his speeches: that the people imprisoned after the protests were paid by the opposition and trained “in Texas, Peru and Chile.”
According to him, all this was confirmed by the prisoners themselves. The families of the prisoners They have reported that the hearings will be held electronically and that people have not had the right to choose their defense.
Maduro also referred to the alleged hacking reported by the CNE on Sunday, which led the electoral authority to claim that the counting of votes was delayed for hours.
The Carter Center, whose election observation mission this week declared that the Venezuelan elections cannot be considered democratic, He assured that there is no evidence of this hacking.
The opposition shouts “we are not afraid”
In another part of the capital of Caracas, citizens live He papered the walls with copies of the minutes and accompanied the caravan of opposition members arriving at the event. “We know what we have to do and we are doing it well,” said right-wing opposition leader María Corina Machado, who appeared in public again alongside presidential candidate Edmundo González Urrutia after the leader this week assured him that he feared for his life and that was why he was in hiding.
Several officials from the ruling party, including Maduro himself, have threatened Machado and González Urrutia with prison sentences.“I do not accept that they propose to us blackmail that equates victims with perpetrators,” the opposition leader said.
“We are not afraid', shouted people gathered at the scene, referring to these threats and the repression the ruling party has used against protesters this week.
Protests against the official results also took place in other countries. In Madrid, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Brussels and Berlin, dozens of people gathered to reject Maduro's re-election.
Shortly after the demonstration began in Caracas, Machado's campaign command was denounced on social networks that state security forces had attempted to hijack the sound truck used at the event.
Venezuelan media They also recorded the presence of police officers in one of the streets of Caracas, at the same time that the opposition meeting was convened.
Confirmation of the Venezuelan Electoral Authority
The Venezuelan electoral authority reaffirmed what it had already announced: that Nicolás Maduro was re-elected as president according to official figures. Five days after the elections of July 28 The National Electoral Council (CNE) gave this assurance on Friday that Maduro obtained 51.95% of the vote, compared to 43.18% for Edmundo González Urrutia, the main opposition candidate, of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD).
Following this announcement, and based on an appeal filed by Maduro, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) called the candidates together, in a first step to announce the election results. Caryslia Rodríguez, president of the TSJ, a body known to have ties to the ruling party, read out this Friday the agreement in which the parties commit to comply with their resolutions regarding the electoral process and to submit their minutes.
There was only one absence from the event: that of González Urrutia. The official broadcast camera focused several times on the empty chair with his name, reserved to the right of Maduro. Everyone present signed the document, except Enrique Márquez, who declared that the hearing was taking place “without any transparency.”
The minutes are still being processed
The CNE has updated the results data in a second bulletin, but continues without making public what the international community has asked for: data broken down by table and the publication of minutes. Several countries have said that this would help support the official version.
The opposition in turn published this information in a website which, they say, does not stop the suffering of attacks. According to their data, González Urrutia is the one chosen by the electorate, with 67% of the votes.
The CNE's announcement is in stark contrast to the decision of Argentina, Uruguay, Ecuador, Peru, Panama and Costa Ricawho joined on Friday US and they already recognize González Urrutia as the elected president.
The condemnation of the repression continues
Monday, the day after the elections, Some citizens took to the streets to protest the results made public by the CNEThe protesters destroyed statues of Hugo Chávez and other representatives of Chavismo, burned paintings of the former president and tore down the huge propaganda posters of Nicolás Maduro, which were eventually dragged to the ground and trampled on.
It didn’t take long for the ruling party’s police and military to suppress these protests. Maduro himself assured this week that they had detained 1,200 people and would go for “another thousand.” On Saturday afternoon, the president increased the number of detainees to 2,000. “There will be no forgiveness,” the president said, “this time there will be Tocorón,” he added, referring to the Aragua Penitentiary Center, one of the country’s most heavily guarded prisons.
The Venezuelan organization Foro Penal, who has dedicated himself to making a record that he updates dailycounted 939 people detained (90 of them teenagers) and 11 dead on Friday afternoon. The media alliance Vota Venezuela There were 20 murdered people counted during the protests. According to journalists and members of civil society, the streets of Venezuela have since been militarized. Shops, supermarkets and pharmacies opened for a few hours and the atmosphere became tense.
Countries in the region spoke out this week against government and international repression They demanded that the right to protest be guaranteed.
Amnesty International, the Center for Justice and International Law, the International Commission of Jurists and the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), among others, called on the international community to remain vigilant to possible human rights violations.