Protests erupt in Venezuela after contested vote denounced by many nations

Caracas, Venezuela: Protests broke out Monday in Caracas, Venezuela's capital, with hundreds of young people marching through the streets furious over results of a presidential election in which the incumbent, President Nicolás Maduro, declared victory despite widespread accusations of fraud, officially proclaiming the election decided without releasing the full vote counts.

The United States and countries around the world denounced the official results of Sunday's vote, which did not appear to match statistical estimates based on partial counts and other data that showed the president losing by a wide margin.

By Monday afternoon, the Venezuelan government announced it had kicked out the diplomatic missions of seven Latin American countries that had condemned the official electoral results.

The opposition leader, María Corina Machado, announced Monday evening that her movement had received paper tallies from 73 per cent of the country's voting stations and refuted the government's claims. Those tallies showed that Maduro's opponent, Edmundo González, had received 3.5 million more votes than the president.

Gonzalez called the margin "mathematically irreversible."

The move by the electoral authority to declare victory but not release detailed voting results, which it had routinely done in past elections, intensified the sense among many Venezuelans and international observers that the election essentially had been stolen.

But Maduro appeared to dig in, with his government announcing that it was investigating top opposition leaders, accusing them of hacking the electoral computer systems.

Sporadic demonstrations in Caracas slums Monday morning grew throughout the day as residents angered by the election results headed toward the center of the capital, reaching traditional government strongholds that have not seen political unrest for more than two decades. Large groups of young men walked more than 5 miles down main roads, tearing down Maduro's campaign posters and chanting "they robbed us!"

Another group of hundreds of people tried to make it to the presidential palace, lighting tires on fire along the way. Pro-government paramilitaries responded by opening fire in the air, and police shot tear gas to disperse the protests.

Protesters in Cumana, 250 miles east of the capital, tried to reach the country's elections headquarters, but they were pushed back by the National Guard.

The disputed election put renewed attention on the approach to Venezuela by the Biden administration, whose negotiations with the authoritarian government and easing of sanctions on the country's vital oil industry had helped pave the way for Sunday's voting. For now, the administration said it was not considering revoking any licenses to sell oil.

The administration said the Maduro administration risks diplomatic isolation as more countries -- even some key allies -- questioned the lack of transparency of an election that appeared to violate international norms.

The Brazilian government, led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, distanced itself from Maduro on Monday, despite years of friendly relations between the two leftist leaders.

In a cautiously worded statement, Lula's government praised "the peaceful nature" of the election, but then called for "the impartial verification of results."

The government added that it was waiting for the release of "data broken down by polling station, an indispensable step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election result."

Colombia, led by Gustavo Petro, a leftist who in the first months of his presidency made drawing closer to Venezuela a priority, also called for the detailed tallies to be released and for international observers who monitored the vote to provide their assessment.

"It's important to clear up any doubts about the results," Colombia Foreign Minister Luis Gilberto Murillo wrote on the social platform X.

How Brazil and Colombia responded was noteworthy because it showed that two of Venezuela's biggest neighbors were unwilling to yet recognize Maduro's claim of reelection and were instead seeking answers.

On Monday night, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico were negotiating a joint statement to call on Venezuela to release voting records from each polling station, hoping that a unified stance from three of the region's most influential nations would help put pressure on Maduro, according to two Brazilian diplomatic officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.

The Venezuelan electoral authority, run by a member of the ruling party, announced early Monday that partial results of Sunday's election showed that Maduro had received 51.2 per cent of the vote and was the clear "irreversible" winner.

Maduro, 61, who has been in power since 2013, had faced off against González, 74, a former diplomat, whom the electoral authority claimed had received 44.2 oer cebt of the vote.

González was essentially a stand-in for Machado, a popular opposition leader who had been disqualified from running.

Machado called the official results "im-poss-ible."

"Everybody knows what happened," she said.

Much of the dispute around Sunday's election focuses on the transparency of the vote count.

The electoral authority has yet to publish any results on its website, breaking with tradition. Moreover, opposition poll witnesses at many voting stations were prevented by electoral officials and soldiers from receiving a paper tally of results, in breach of the regulations and precedent.

The paper tallies record the votes cast at each voting machine. Without them, it is difficult for the opposition to add up individual tallies to cross-reference -- and dispute -- the national results.

The opposition also said there were irregularities in the way that results were digitally transmitted from the voting stations to the electoral system.

Machado said that by Monday evening, the opposition had received 73 per cent of the paper tallies, which showed González had won in a landslide.

Opposition volunteers scanned and posted them online so everyone could see the evidence, she said.

John Kirby, a national security spokesperson for the White House, said the United States has "serious concerns that the result as announced does not reflect the will and the votes of the Venezuelan people" and challenged authorities there to publish full detailed tabulations of the vote.

The United States has tried to push Maduro from power for years, and the Trump administration responded to a flawed 2018 presidential vote in which Maduro claimed victory by imposing a series of tough economic sanctions on Venezuela's oil industry.

The Biden administration had lifted some of those penalties in exchange for a commitment from the Maduro government to work toward competitive elections.

Kirby would not discuss whether the United States would respond with further sanctions.

"We're watching," he said. "The world's watching. I won't get ahead of a decision that hasn't been made here in terms of consequences."

The Biden administration faces a difficult choice. Sanctions could deepen Venezuela's economic woes and increase migration toward the United States before the presidential election in November. But not taking a tough stance could strengthen Maduro and allow Republicans to attack the US president as weak on autocrats.

Maduro said the United States should not meddle in other nations' affairs.

Venezuelan Justice Minister Tarek William Saab said Monday the government was looking into acts of vandalism against government installations, and said three opposition leaders, including Machado, were under investigation for a hack of Venezuela's electoral system.

Maduro said the opposition was prepared to use a tired tactic: crying fraud even before the election had taken place.

"I've seen this movie a few times," Maduro said.

Maduro did receive support from allied leaders in Cuba, Serbia, Nicaragua, Russia, Bolivia and Honduras, who applauded his victory.

Daniel Ortega, who as president of Nicaragua has overseen the end of democracy in his own country, congratulated Maduro on his victory, and Cuba's leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, said he had "defeated the pro-imperialist opposition."

President Vladimir Putin of Russia said he was eager to strengthen ties between the two countries. "Russian-Venezuelan relations have the character of a strategic partnership," Putin said in a message to Maduro, the Kremlin said in a statement.

Iran and China also congratulated Maduro on his victory.

But across Latin America, leaders of Uruguay, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina and Guatemala all denounced the results.

"The Maduro regime must understand that the results they publish are difficult to believe," Chile's leftist leader, Gabriel Boric, said on X.

By Monday afternoon, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yván Gil announced that Venezuela had ousted all diplomats from Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic and Uruguay.

The country perhaps best positioned to foster negotiations between the Maduro government and the opposition is Brazil -- a neighbor to Venezuela, Latin America's largest nation and a country led by Lula, a politician who for many years has kept a friendly relationship with Maduro.

Yet Brazil has long been hesitant to get deeply involved in another country's domestic affairs.

Lula's chief foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, was still in Caracas on Monday trying to get answers about election results. He met with Maduro in Venezuela's presidential palace Monday afternoon and was expected to meet with González as well. In comments to reporters Monday, Amorim said Brazil still did not know who won the election.

"The result can only be verified when the results from the various polling stations are released," Amorim said. "A general number isn't enough."