President Nicolas Maduro speaks to supporters after electoral authorities declared him the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, July 29, 2024.
Fernando Vergara/AP
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Fernando Vergara/AP
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.
“Venezuelans and the whole world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first speech.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said Gonzalez’s margin of victory was “overwhelming,” based on vote tallies she received from campaign officials from about 40 percent of polls nationwide.
The National Electoral Council (CNE), controlled by Maduro supporters, had earlier announced that Maduro had won 51% of the vote to González’s 44%. But it has not released the results from each of the country’s 30,000 polling stations, promising to do so only in the “coming hours,” making it difficult to verify the results.
Foreign leaders have been slow to recognize the results.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results it has published are difficult to believe,” said Gabriel Boric, the leader of the Chilean left. “We will not recognize any result that is not verifiable.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States had “serious concerns that the announced result does not reflect the will or votes of the Venezuelan people,” speaking in Tokyo.
The delay in announcing the results – six hours after polls were scheduled to close – indicates a deep debate within the government over how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.
When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the electoral system.
“This is not the first time they have tried to undermine the peace of the republic,” he told a few hundred supporters gathered at the presidential palace. He provided no evidence to support his claims but promised “justice” for those who try to stir up violence in Venezuela.
Opposition representatives said the results obtained from campaign representatives at polling stations showed that Gonzalez had beaten Maduro. The president of the electoral council said the official voting records would be published in the coming hours.
Maduro celebrated the result with a few hundred supporters at the presidential palace.
Maduro, seeking a third term, faced his biggest challenge yet from the most unlikely opponent, González: a retired diplomat who was unknown to voters until he was tapped in April as a last-minute replacement for powerful opponent Maria Corina Machado.
Earlier, opposition leaders celebrated online and outside some polling stations what they said was a landslide victory for González.
“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as an opposition representative left a polling station in a working-class Caracas neighborhood to announce results showing González had more than doubled Maduro’s vote. Dozens of people gathered nearby to perform an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path to a new Venezuela,” Fernández added, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”
Voters began lining up at some polling stations across the country before dawn on Sunday, sharing water, coffee and snacks for several hours.
The election will have repercussions across the Americas, with opponents and supporters of the government signaling their interest in joining the exodus of 7.7 million Venezuelans who have already left their homes for opportunities abroad if Maduro wins another six-year term.
Authorities decided Sunday’s election would coincide with the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chavez, the revered leftist who died of cancer in 2013, leaving the Bolivarian Revolution in Maduro’s hands. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever with many voters who accuse his policies of driving down wages, increasing hunger, crippling the oil industry and separating families because of immigration.
Supporters of President Nicolas Maduro celebrate after electoral authorities declared him the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, July 29, 2024.
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Cristian Hernandez/AP
The opposition has managed to rally around a single candidate after years of party divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed its ambitions to topple the ruling party.
For 15 years, the Supreme Court, controlled by Maduro, barred Machado from running for any office. A former congresswoman, she won the opposition’s October primary with more than 90 percent of the vote. After being barred from running for president, she chose a university professor as her replacement on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council barred her from registering as well. That’s when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
Sunday’s vote also saw eight other candidates challenge Maduro, but only González threatens Maduro’s rule.
After voting, Maduro said he would recognize the election result and urged all other candidates to publicly declare that they would do the same.
“Nobody is going to create chaos in Venezuela,” Maduro said. “I recognize and I will recognize the electoral arbiter, the official announcements and I will make sure that they are recognized.”
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, right, and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez hold a news conference after electoral authorities declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, Monday, July 29, 2024.
Matias Delacroix/AP
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Matias Delacroix/AP
Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s most advanced economy. But it went into freefall after Maduro came to power. Plunging oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that topped 130,000% led first to social unrest and then to mass emigration.
Economic sanctions imposed by the United States to force Maduro from power after his 2018 re-election – which the United States and dozens of other countries condemned as illegitimate – have only deepened the crisis.
In this election, Maduro has presented voters with economic security, which he has tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable exchange rate and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund projects that the economy will grow 4% this year, one of the fastest in Latin America, after shrinking 71% between 2012 and 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen their quality of life improve. Many earn less than $200 a month, meaning families struggle to afford basic necessities. Some work second or third jobs. A basket of basic necessities, enough to feed a family of four for a month, costs about $385.
The opposition has tried to take advantage of the enormous inequalities born of the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country’s currency, the bolivar, for the US dollar.
González and Machado have focused much of their campaign on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years has failed to materialize. They have promised a government that would create enough jobs to entice Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
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