CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — As thousands of people demonstrated across Venezuela, opposition candidate Edmundo González announced Monday that his campaign has the proof it needs to show he won the country’s disputed election in which electoral authorities named President Nicolás Maduro the victor.

González and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told reporters they have obtained more than 70% of tally sheets from Sunday’s election, and they show González with more than double Maduro’s votes. Both called on people, some of whom protested in the hours after Maduro was declared winner, to remain calm and invited them to gather peacefully at 11 a.m. Tuesday to celebrate the results.

“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” González said as dozens of supporters cheered outside campaign headquarters in the capital, Caracas. “We have in our hands the tally sheets that demonstrate our categorical and mathematically irreversible victory.”

Their announcement came after the National Electoral Council, which is loyal to Maduro’s ruling Unites Socialist Party of Venezuela, officially declared him the winner, handing him his third six-year term.

Thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Venezuela on Monday to protest the victory of Nicolás Maduro in the country’s presidential election.

In the capital, the protests were mostly peaceful, but when dozens of riot gear-clad national police officers blocked the caravan, a brawl broke. Police used tear gas to disperse the protesters, some of whom threw stones and other objects at officers who had stationed themselves on a main avenue of an upper-class district.

  • Avid Amoeba
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    4 months ago

    They’re probably right but looking at their political positions, I’m not sure Venezuela would be much better off with them. It looks like a run-of-the-mill economic shock therapy that has failed across the world. 😔

    • Gsus4@mander.xyz
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      4 months ago

      https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/24/world/americas/venezuela-election-opposition-machado.html

      Apparently she admires Thatcher and wants to go on a privatization spree…which would indeed be shock therapy in a country like Venezuela… …but if they won, they won. I don’t like Erdogan or Milei…but if they had the popular support…

      update: apparently, the neoliberal MUD was the only realistic opposition to run against maduro, because the government blocked all the actual socialists with a shot at winning from running (e.g. Henrique Capriles (banned from running), Leopoldo López (jailed and exiled), Antonio Ledezma (ormer mayor of Caracas), Freddy Guevara (jailed) Freddy Superlano (blocked and jailed today))…and still lost to the neoliberals. That’s how much people hate Maduro.

      • Avid Amoeba
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        4 months ago

        Milei is what I see from a brief review of their positions. Mass privatization (including oil production), rich is good, etc. They seem to lack the theatrics though.