The AP reviewed 24,000 printouts representing 79 percent of the electronic voting machines in the country and found that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia received 6.89 million votes, while Maduro received 3.13 million.
This is contrary to the results that the country’s electoral commission has published, which show that Maduro received 6.4 million votes and González 5.3 million.
AP based its analysis on transcripts obtained by the opposition at a large number of polling stations before the possibility was stopped by the authorities. According to the law, the transcripts must be made public, but the authorities have not done so.
Skepticism and condemnation
Maduro’s claim that he won the election has been met with skepticism, criticism and condemnation not only from the opposition but also around the world.
The United States, Argentina and a number of other Latin American countries such as Ecuador, Peru, Costa Rica and Uruguay have already recognized González as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
– As a result of the obvious falsification of the election results, the Ecuadorian government recognizes Edmundo González over the authoritarian incumbent President Nicolás Maduro, says the announcement from Ecuador.
The foreign ministers of the G7 have also expressed concern, and on Sunday seven EU countries, including Italy, France, Germany and Spain, demanded that Venezuela publish the transcripts from the election.
Maduro has only received support from close allies such as Russia, China, Nicaragua, Honduras and Bolivia.
Several countries in Latin America have severed diplomatic relations with Venezuela, and Venezuela itself has brought home the ambassadors from several countries, among them Panama, Argentina and Chile.
Skeptical left
The Latin American countries that condemn what they call electoral fraud in Venezuela all have right-wing or centrist governments.
New this time, however, is great skepticism about the election results among left-wing presidents in the region who have previously stood by Maduro’s side.
Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Colombia’s Gustavo Petro and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador have called for an independent review of the results, saying they will only recognize the election results when all the election transcripts are published.
Chile’s President Gabriel Boric also said earlier this week that it was difficult to believe the official election results.
The Spanish newspaper El Pais wrote earlier this week about hectic diplomatic activity between Washington and several countries in Latin America regarding a solution where Maduro could withdraw.
Among other things, there has been close contact between US President Joe Biden and Lula da Silva, who have great respect for each other from a long time ago.
New protests
Thousands of people again poured into the streets of the capital Caracas and other cities on Saturday to protest against Maduro. Many of them come from slum areas where support for Maduro was previously strong.
According to Maduro, 2,000 people have been arrested for demonstrating and will be sent to the high-security prisons of Tocorón and Tocuyito. Human rights groups report that eleven people were killed in the first protests at the beginning of the week
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, who was not allowed to stand for election, says they are not giving up their right to protest.
– We have never been as strong as we are now. The regime has never been as weak as it is now. It has lost all legitimacy, she said on Saturday when she made a surprise appearance on the loading platform of a truck during one of the demonstrations.
Machado has spent most of the week after the election in hiding after Maduro threatened to have her arrested. On Friday, the opposition’s offices were ransacked by masked men who took documents and razed the premises.
Economic collapse
Maduro leads a country that has the world’s largest oil reserves and was once Latin America’s strongest economy.
But after Maduro became president when his predecessor Hugo Chávez died in 2013, the economy has been in freefall with hyperinflation of up to 130,000 percent and an 80 percent decline in gross national product.
Nearly 8 million people have fled the country, which is the largest migration in Latin American history. 3 million of them stay in Colombia.
US sanctions in recent years have only worsened the situation. The Biden administration has wanted to ease them and therefore entered into an agreement with Maduro’s government on free elections, but after the disputed election it is likely that they will be tightened again.
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2024-08-04 13:07:01
