Public anger over suspicions that the Chavistas committed fraud in Sunday’s presidential election has spread across Venezuela. Statues of Hugo Chavez were knocked down with sledgehammers in three cities. Protesters decapitated one of the images of the commander and dragged the bronze head on a motorcycle with a chain, as Achilles did with the corpse of Hector in Troy. People applauded as they passed.
The country is experiencing hours of anguish. The opposition has made public its own count based on the minutes they have compiled, which gives Edmundo González the victory with a very wide difference over Nicolás Maduro: 6.2 million votes against 2.7. Edmundo’s campaign, backed by opposition leader María Corina Machado, uploaded all these documents to a website so that they could be compared. These minutes would disprove the official story that the Venezuelan president won the presidential election with a million votes in his favor.
The international community openly distrusts the numbers presented by Chavismo. Firstly, because the government has not offered the specific data recorded in each electoral centre. And secondly, because it has not demonstrated that the delay in announcing the count was due to a hacking from North Macedonia, as the Attorney General has denounced. Countries concerned about the Venezuelan situation – from the United States to the European Union or Latin American giants such as Brazil, Colombia and Mexico – are demanding that the Maduro government carry out a transparent recount, with the help of independent auditors, to clear up all doubts.

There is a lot at stake. Chavismo should be the first to be interested in the truth of what happened that night being known, because it needs a victory that is internationally recognized and that opens the doors of markets and multilateral organizations again. Chavismo does not say it, but its status as a pariah on the world stage bothers its leaders. The same happens with the foreign press, which it constantly attacks and disdains, but which it nevertheless reads very carefully. This was an opportunity to break out of this isolation with which it has lived for years, whether with the current president or with a new one who would normalize the political life of the country. In fact, these were the main reasons for setting a date and holding these elections, agreed after more than a year of three-way negotiations between the opposition, the government and the White House.
Discontent over the result has brought people out onto the streets. Hordes of young people surrounded the Miraflores Palace, the presidential residence, in Caracas on Monday night. The city was taken over by Chavista security forces. The protests began on the balconies of houses, where people came out to shout fraud and brandish pots and pans. Later, they moved to the avenues, which were blocked by young people on motorbikes waving Venezuelan flags. They set up bonfires in the middle of the road and threw photos and election propaganda of Maduro into the bonfire.

Marina Calderon
As the hours passed, the situation became more tense and led to clashes with the police. Foro Penal, a Venezuelan human rights organization, speaks of 46 demonstrators arrested. The deaths of at least two people have been confirmed, and the deaths of several more have been posted on social media, although they have not been verified. Provea, an NGO, claims that relatives of 25 students have reported that they have disappeared after protesting in front of the National Security University because they were forced by the director to vote for Maduro. The organization details the names and surnames of some of the students. The colectivos, street groups that are experts in confrontations, also clashed with the demonstrators, in some cases firing bullets.
Maduro has assured that they have identified those who tore down statues of Chavez, who was the one who named him as his successor shortly before dying of colon cancer in 2013. The president has settled into the narrative that the opposition, as contradictory as it may seem at first glance, wanted to carry out a coup at the polls and establish a “fascist government.” “We declare ourselves in permanent vigil and action to end the coup against Venezuela,” he said. The role of the military is also being scrutinized in these hours. Many wondered if the armed forces would endorse a fraud by Chavismo, if it had occurred. For now, the leadership has shown loyalty in the words of the Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, who assured that they will guarantee peace in Venezuela and that they will not allow the calm in the country to be disturbed after “the demonstration of civility” that was experienced on Sunday. “I call for reflection again. “We don’t want unsuspecting people out there to start playing the role of useful fools to disturb the peace of this country,” he said in a video released.

The next few days will be vital. Part of the international community was convinced that Chavismo would finally be able to accept defeat and become the opposition, and from there rebuild itself as a movement after the wear and tear it has suffered in recent years due to the brutal economic crisis it has had to manage and the continuous violations of human rights it is accused of having committed. Now, asking for the auditing of the records is a way of insisting on the idea of the need for a process of change in a country that is currently governed in an authoritarian manner. For now, it does not seem that there is an express will on the part of Chavismo to make the count transparent. The rest of the world will push for it to accept it.
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