‘Never has regime been so weak’: Venezuelan opposition leader rallies supporters

Thousands of people have rallied in the streets of Venezuela’s capital, waving flags and singing the national anthem in support of an opposition candidate they believe won the presidential election by a landslide.

Authorities have declared President Nicolas Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s election but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove he won.

Instead, the government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed poll, and the president has threatened to lock up opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and her presidential candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez.

On Saturday, supporters chanted and sang as Ms Machado arrived at the rally in Caracas.

Ms Machado, who has been barred by Mr Maduro’s government from running for office for 15 years, had been in hiding since Tuesday, saying her life and freedom are at risk.

Masked assailants ransacked the opposition’s headquarters on Friday, taking documents away.

Ms Machado held aloft a Venezuelan flag and promised that the regime that has forced millions of Venezuelans to leave their country was finally coming to an end.

“We have overcome all the barriers. We have knocked them all down,” Ms Machado said. “Never has the regime been so weak.”

Carmen Elena Garcia, a 57-year-old street vendor, joined the rally even though she said she feared the government might attack.

“They have to respect me and they have to respect all the Venezuelans who voted against this government,” Ms Garcia said. “We will not accept them stealing our votes. They have to respect our votes.”

On Friday, Mr Maduro alleged during a news conference that members of the opposition were planning an attack in a Caracas neighbourhood near where the Machado rally was taking place on Saturday.

He said he had ordered the armed forces to guard the neighbourhood, and also urged his supporters to attend “the mother of all marches” on Saturday elsewhere in Caracas.

The Organisation of American States (OAS) on Saturday called for “reconciliation and justice” in Venezuela.

“Let all Venezuelans who express themselves in the streets find only an echo of peace, a peace that reflects the spirit of democracy,” the OAS said in a statement.

Ms Machado and Mr Gonzalez, a 74-year-old former diplomat, said tally sheets they obtained from polling centres nationwide show Mr Maduro lost his bid for a third six-year term by a landslide.

An Associated Press analysis of vote tally sheets released by Venezuela’s main opposition indicates that Mr Gonzalez won significantly more votes in the election than the government has claimed, casting serious doubt on the official declaration that Mr Maduro won.

Late Friday, the country’s high court, the Supreme Justice Tribunal, ordered the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council to hand over the precinct vote count sheets in three days.

There have been calls from multiple governments, including Mr Maduro’s close regional allies, for Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release the precinct-level tallies, as it has after previous elections.

The AP processed almost 24,000 images of tally sheets, representing the results from 79% of voting machines. Each sheet encoded vote counts in QR codes, which the AP programmatically decoded and analysed, resulting in tabulations of 10.26 million votes.

According to the calculations, Mr Gonzalez received 6.89 million votes, nearly half a million more than the government says Mr Maduro won. The tabulations also show Mr Maduro received 3.13 million votes from the tally sheets released.

By comparison, the National Electoral Council said on Friday that based on 96.87% of tally sheets, Mr Maduro had won 6.4 million votes and Mr Gonzalez had 5.3 million. National Electoral Council president Elvis Amoroso attributed the delay in updating results to “massive attacks” on the “technological infrastructure”.