Venezuelan opposition, regime backers to hold rival protests

Venezuelans in Mexico protest on August 10. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has called demonstrations Saturday for more than 300 cities in Venezuela and abroad – Copyright AFP/File ALFREDO ESTRELLA

Andrea TOSTA

Venezuela’s opposition and regime supporters will vie for the streets of Caracas Saturday in rival demonstrations amid a political crisis sparked by the election victory claimed by strongman Nicolas Maduro but widely rejected at home and abroad.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado has called demonstrations for more than 300 cities in Venezuela and abroad, what she called a “Protest for the Truth.”

On Friday, she urged supporters to “keep up the fight.”

Anti-Maduro protests have claimed 25 lives so far, with nearly 200 injured and more than 2,400 arrested since the July 28 vote that both the president and opposition say they had won.

Machado, who had her presidential candidacy blocked by institutions loyal to Maduro, will be at the Caracas march despite having been largely in hiding since election day.

Maduro had called for Machado and Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced her on the ballot, to be arrested. He accuses them of seeking to foment a “coup d’etat.”

Venezuela’s CNE electoral council proclaimed Maduro the winner of a third six-year term until 2031, giving him 52 percent of votes cast on July 28 but without providing a detailed breakdown of the results.

The opposition says polling station-level results show Gonzalez Urrutia took more than two-thirds of the vote. 

– ‘Lies, repression, violence’ –

Maduro’s victory claim has been rejected by the United States, European Union and several Latin American countries.

Machado called in a live Instagram broadcast Friday for people to “keep up the fight” and stand strong against Maduro’s strategy of “demoralization” through “lies, repression, violence.”

Neighbors Colombia and Brazil on Thursday called for fresh elections in Venezuela, but Machado said this would show “a lack of respect” for the popular will already expressed on July 28.

On Friday, Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, traditionally a leftist ally of Maduro, took a harsh tone, describing the regime in Caracas as “very unpleasant” as he insisted it release a detailed vote breakdown.

In a radio interview, Lula declined to label the Maduro government a dictatorship, but said it had an “authoritarian bias.” 

The Organization of American States approved a resolution in Washington Friday urging Caracas to “expeditiously publish the presidential election records, including the voting results at the level of each polling station.”

And in a joint statement Friday, the European Union and 22 countries called for an “impartial verification” of the election outcome.

– Cyber ‘attack’ –

The CNE says it has been unable to release the results due to a “cyber terrorist attack” on its systems, though the Carter Center observer mission has said there was no evidence for such a claim.

The opposition, for its part, says it has had access to 80 percent of paper ballots cast, which show that Gonzalez Urrutia won handily.

The ruling “Chavista” movement, named after Maduro’s socialist predecessor Hugo Chavez, has also called demonstrations for Saturday in Caracas “in support of the victory” of the president in office since 2013.

Maduro has asked the Supreme Court, also said to be loyal to him, to “certify” the election result.

“Venezuela’s conflicts… are resolved among Venezuelans, with their institutions, with their law, with their Constitution,” he insisted on Thursday.

Maduro’s reelection to a second term in 2018 was also rejected as illegitimate by most Western and Latin American countries.