Venezuela in turmoil as protesters dispute election result, 11 killed

Protesters took to streets throughout Venezuela on Tuesday, waving flags and demanding President Nicolas Maduro acknowledge he lost Sunday's election to an opposition that says they clinched a landslide victory.The protests, which the government denounced as an attempted "coup," began after the election board declared on Monday that Maduro had won a third term with 51% of votes to extend the "Chavista" movement's quarter-century rule.The opposition's Maria Corina Machado called for families to turn out on Tuesday for "popular assemblies" across the South American nation. Machado told reporters a day earlier that a review of available voting records from Sunday's election showed that presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had achieved a "categorical and mathematically irreversible" victory over Maduro.

Venezuela have decided to protest the win of President Maduro. Mnaona what we mean by 2 million March wakuu? #NaneNane pic.twitter.com/I6FgTbVIbV

— Nelson Amenya (@amenya_nelson) July 29, 2024

China – a staunch Maduro ally – pushes back on efforts to call into question the outcome of presidential election, saying “all parties should respect the choice made by the Venezuelan people”.A local monitoring group, the Venezuelan Conflict Observatory, said it had registered 187 protests in 20 states by Monday evening, with "numerous acts of repression and violence" carried out by paramilitary groups and security forces. According to rights group Foro Penal, at least 11 people had been killed in incidents related to the election count or the protests.The opposition, which considers the election body in the pockets of a dictatorial government, said the 73 per cent of vote tallies to which it has access showed its candidate, Edmundo González, had more than twice as many votes as Maduro.
Many Venezuelans staged "cacerolazos," a traditional Latin American protest where people bang pots and pans in anger. Some blocked roads, lit fires and threw petrol bombs at police as protests proliferated, including near the Miraflores presidential palace in the capital, Caracas.Maduro, a 61-year-old former union leader and foreign minister, won election after Chavez's death in 2013 and was re-elected in 2018. The opposition said both votes were rigged.He has presided over an economic collapse, mass migration and deteriorating relations with the West, including U.S. and EU sanctions that have crippled an already struggling oil industry.Defence Minister Vladimir Padrino warned against allowing a repeat of the "terrible situations of 2014, 2017 and 2019," when waves of anti-government protests led to hundreds of deaths and failed to dislodge Maduro.