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The normally bustling Venezuelan capital was unusually quiet Monday, a day after the country's political opposition and its entrenched incumbent both claimed victory in a presidential election to decide who will take control of an economy recovering from collapse and a population desperate for change.
Officials delayed the release of detailed vote tallies from Sunday's election after proclaiming Nicolás Maduro the winner with 51% of the vote, compared with 44% for retired diplomat Edmundo González. The competing claims set up a high-stakes standoff.
"Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” González said. The opposition vowed it would defend its votes, but González and his allies asked supporters to remain calm and called on the government to avoid stoking conflict.
Maduro 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.
Several foreign governments, including the U.S. and the European Union, held off recognizing the election results.
Caracas awoke as if it were a holiday, with some businesses shuttered, bus stops empty and traffic nonexistent. A few hours earlier, around midnight, a mix of anger, tears and loud pot banging greeted the announcement of results by the Maduro-controlled National Electoral Council.
Eating breakfast on a bench next to an unopened business, 28-year-old Deyvid Cadenas said he felt cheated.
“The majority voted for the opposition," said Cadenas, who cast a ballot in a presidential election for the first time. "I don't believe yesterday’s results.”
After failing to oust Maduro during three rounds of demonstrations since 2014, the opposition put its faith in the ballot box. The elections were among the most peaceful in recent memory, reflecting hopes that Venezuela could avoid bloodshed and end 25 years of single-party rule.
The country sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy. But after Maduro took the helm, it tumbled into a free fall marked by plummeting oil prices, widespread shortages of basic goods and hyperinflation of 130,000%.
U.S. oil sanctions sought to force Maduro from power after his 2018 reelection, which dozens of countries condemned as illegitimate. But the sanctions only accelerated the exodus of some 7.7 million Venezuelans who have fled their crisis-stricken nation.
The opposition's call for calm partly reflected protest fatigue among voters, who polls show are in no rush to upend their lives by taking to the streets as they have previously.
Voters lined up before dawn Sunday to cast ballots, boosting the opposition’s hopes it was about to break Maduro’s grip on power.
The official results came as a shock to many who had celebrated, online and outside a few voting centers, what they believed was a landslide victory for González.
“I’m so happy,” said Merling Fernández, a 31-year-old bank employee, as a representative for the opposition campaign walked out of a voting center in a working-class neighborhood of Caracas to announce results showing González with more than double Maduro’s vote count. Dozens of people standing nearby erupted in an impromptu rendition of the national anthem.
“This is the path toward a new Venezuela,” added Fernández, holding back tears. “We are all tired of this yoke.”
Gabriel Boric, the leftist leader of Chile, called the results “difficult to believe,” while U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington had “serious concerns" that the announced tally did not reflect the actual votes or the will of the people.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado said the margin of González’s victory was “overwhelming,” based on tallies the campaign received from representatives stationed at about 40% of ballot boxes.
Authorities postponed releasing the results from each of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide, promising only to do so in the “coming hours.” The delay hampered attempts to verify the results.
González was the unlikeliest of opposition standard bearers. The 74-year-old was unknown until he was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for opposition powerhouse Machado, who was blocked by the Maduro-controlled supreme court from running for any office for 15 years.
The delay in announcing a winner — which came 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.
Authorities set Sunday's election to coincide with what would have been the 70th birthday of former President Hugo Chávez, the revered leftist firebrand who died of cancer in 2013, leaving his Bolivarian revolution in the hands of Maduro. But Maduro and his United Socialist Party of Venezuela are more unpopular than ever among many voters who blame his policies for crushingly low wages that spurred hunger, crippled the oil industry and separated families due to migration.
The president's pitch this election was one of economic security, which he tried to sell with stories of entrepreneurship and references to a stable currency exchange and lower inflation rates. The International Monetary Fund forecasts the economy will grow 4% this year — one of the fastest in Latin America — after shrinking 71% from 2012 to 2020.
But most Venezuelans have not seen any improvement in their quality of life. Many earn under $200 a month, which means families struggle to afford essential items. Some work second and third jobs. A basket of food staples to feed a family of four for a month costs an estimated $385.
The opposition managed to line up behind a single candidate after years of intraparty divisions and election boycotts that torpedoed their ambitions to topple the ruling party.
A former lawmaker, Machado swept the opposition's October primary with over 90% of the vote. After she was blocked from joining the presidential race, she chose a college professor as her substitute on the ballot, but the National Electoral Council also barred her from registering. That's when González, a political newcomer, was chosen.
The opposition has tried to seize on the huge inequalities arising from the crisis, during which Venezuelans abandoned their country's currency, the bolivar, for the U.S. dollar.
González and Machado focused much of their campaigning on Venezuela’s vast hinterland, where the economic activity seen in Caracas in recent years never materialized. They promised a government that would create sufficient jobs to attract Venezuelans living abroad to return home and reunite with their families.
