CARACAS, Venezuela, July 29, (AP): Venezuela’s opposition claimed victory in Sunday’s presidential election, setting up a showdown with the government, which earlier declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner.
"The Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” opposition candidate Edmundo González said in his first remarks.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said the margin of González's victory was "overwhelming" based on voting tallies it had received from campaign representatives from about 40% of ballot boxes nationwide.
The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro loyalists, earlier said Maduro had secured 51% of the vote to 44% for González. But it didn't release the tallies from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the "coming hours,” hampering the ability to verify the results.
Foreign leaders held off recognizing the results.
"The Maduro regime should understand that the results it published are difficult to believe," said Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile. "We won't recognize any result that is not verifiable.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US has "serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people,” speaking in Tokyo.
The delay in announcing results - six hours after polls were supposed to close - indicated a deep debate inside the government about how to proceed after Maduro’s opponents came out early in the evening all but claiming victory.
When Maduro finally came out to celebrate the results, he accused unidentified foreign enemies of trying to hack the voting system.
"This is not the first time that they have tried to violate the peace of the republic,” he said to a few hundred supporters at the presidential palace. He provided no evidence to back the claim but promised "justice” for those who try to stir violence in Venezuela.
Opposition representatives said tallies they collected from campaign representatives at the polling stations showed González trouncing Maduro. Meanwhile, the head of the electoral council said it would release the official voting acts in the coming hours.
Maduro celebrated the result with a few hundreds supporters at the presidential palace.