Caracas (TIP): As thousands of people demonstrated across Venezuela, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez on July 29 announced that his campaign has the proof it needs to show he won the country’s disputed election whose victory electoral authorities handed to President Nicolas Maduro.
Gonzalez and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told reporters they have obtained more than 70 per cent of tally sheets from Sunday’s election, and they show Gonzalez 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 am Tuesday to celebrate the results.
“I speak to you with the calmness of the truth,” Gonzalez 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.
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.
A man fired a gun as the protesters moved through the city’s financial district. No one suffered a gunshot wound.
The demonstrations followed an election that was among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule. The winner was to take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change.
“We have never been moved by hatred. On the contrary, we have always been victims of the powerful,” Maduro said in a nationally televised ceremony.
“An attempt is being made to impose a coup d’eacute;tat in Venezuela again of a fascist and counterrevolutionary nature.”
“We already know this movie, and this time, there will be no kind of weakness,” he added, saying that Venezuela’s “law will be respected.” Machado told reporters tally sheets show Maduro and Gonzalez received more than 2.7 million and roughly 6.2 million votes respectively.
“A free people is one that is respected, and we are going to fight for our freedom,” Gonzalez said. “Dear friends, I understand your indignation, but our response from the democratic sectors is of calmness and firmness.” Venezuelans vote using electronic machines, which record votes and provide every voter a paper receipt that shows the candidate of their choice. Voters are supposed to deposit their receipt at ballot boxes before exiting the polls.
After polls close, each machine prints a tally sheet showing the candidates’ names and the votes they received.
But the ruling party wields tight control over the voting system, both through a loyal five-member electoral council and a network of longtime local party coordinators who get near unrestricted access to voting centres. Those coordinators, some of whom are responsible for handing out government benefits including subsidised food, have blocked representatives of opposition parties from entering voting centres as allowed by law to witness the voting process, vote counting and, crucially, to obtain a copy of the machines’ final tally sheet. (AP)