Security forces in Venezuela fired tear gas and rubber bullets at people protesting disputed election results Sunday.
Thousands of people gathered in central Caracas on Monday night, some of them walking all the way from slums in the mountains around the city to the presidential palace. Protests erupted in the Venezuelan capital a day after President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory.
The opposition dismissed Maduro’s claims of victory as fraud, saying their candidate, Edmundo González, won the election with 73.2% of the vote. Surveys leading up to the election showed a clear win for González.
Opposition parties have united behind González in a bid to oust President Maduro after 11 years in power, amid widespread discontent over the country’s economic crisis.
A number of Western and Latin American countries, as well as international bodies including the UN, have called on Venezuelan authorities to release voting records from every polling station.
A heavy military and police presence, including water cannons, was seen on the streets of Caracas in an attempt to disperse the protesters and prevent them from approaching the presidential palace. Crowds chanted “Freedom, freedom!” and called for the government to fall.
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Footage showed burning tires on the highway and crowds of people on the streets, with police on motorbikes firing tear gas. In some areas, posters of President Maduro were torn down and burned, while tires, cars and trash were also set on fire. Armed police, military and left-wing paramilitaries sympathetic to the government clashed with protesters and blocked many roads around the city center.
The BBC spoke to several people who attended one of the protests in a densely populated area known as La Lucha, meaning “the fight”. Paola Sarzalejo, 41, said the vote was “too bad, a fraud. We won with 70%, but they do the same thing to us again. They took the election away from us again. We want a better future for our youth, for our country.”
His father, Miguel, 64, agreed, saying: “He lost the election, he has no right to be here now.” He added: “We want a better future for the young people because otherwise they will leave the country. They can do good work and earn a good living. We have a rich country and he is destroying everything. If all the young people leave, only the old people will be left in Venezuela, only the elderly.”
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Cristobal Martinez, draped in a Venezuelan flag, said he considered the election a “fraud”. He said most young people in La Lucha and the surrounding area had voted in an election that was crucial for young people because “many of us are unemployed” and “the majority do not study”.
“This is the first time I voted in my life. I was there from six in the morning until about nine in the morning and I saw a lot of people moving in the street. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with the government. The majority of people participated for change.”
He said despite President Maduro’s long tenure there had been “no change” and the situation was “worse since President Chavez died”. He accused some elderly people sympathetic to the government of living off bonuses or food aid while “we want change, we want decent jobs, a good future for our country”.
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Martinez said he wanted “people from other countries to help us… so that disasters don’t happen like in the past.”
Maduro accused the opposition of calling a coup by disputing the results. “This is not the first time we have faced what we are facing today,” he said.
“They are trying to impose in Venezuela a coup once again with a fascist and counter-revolutionary character.”
Venezuela’s attorney general warned that roadblocks or violations of the law related to disruption of protests would face the full force of the law and that 32 people had been detained on charges ranging from destroying electoral material to inciting violence.
Meanwhile, senior US officials said the announced results “do not align with the data we have received through quick count mechanisms and other sources, suggesting that the announced results may be at odds with how people voted”. That was “a major source of concern for us”, they added.
“That is why we are calling on Venezuelan electoral authorities to release the underlying data that supports the figures they have publicly announced.”
The US has not said what the results mean for its sanctions policy on Venezuela, however. Officials have stressed that while they doubt the outcome, President Maduro did call the election and allow opposition candidates on the ballot – even though opposition leaders are barred from running.
The Organization of American States (OAS) announced on Monday night that it would hold a meeting on Wednesday with its permanent council regarding the Venezuela outcome. (BBC/Z-3)
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