On Sunday, Venezuelans took to the polls to cast their votes in the presidential election between authoritarian incumbent Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez. When the ballots were tallied, the nation's electoral authority declared that the former had won yet again by a margin of 51 percent to 44 percent.
The outcome has been hotly contested, with the opposition and governments around the world casting doubt on the results. Many within Gonzalez's party, including barred former opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, have claimed that he actually garnered 70 percent of the vote, according to the Times of Israel. The electoral authority has not yet released the official tallies from the 30,000 polling centres, despite pressure to do so.
"We know what happened today," Machado told Gonzalez's audience following the announcement of the results, per Al Jazeera. "The regime knows. The entire international community knows. The most important thing is that we, the Venezuelans, know it. Not only did we defeat [Maduro], politically, morally and spiritually, we defeated him with votes throughout Venezuela."
"The national armed forces know the will of the people should be respected and that’s what we hope for," she added. "We won’t accept blackmailing that defence of truth is violence. No, violence is to betray the truth."
In a statement, Maduro argued the electoral system had been "hacked" to prevent the results from being announced. He later claimed they knew which country had done it, but "won't mention" who.
When news of Maduro's alleged victory emerged, governments released statements calling for full transparency to ensure the people had their voices heard.
"Their will must be respected," the European Union's foreign affairs high representative, Josep Borrell Fontelles, wrote in a post on X. "Ensuring full transparency in the electoral process, including detailed counting of votes and access to voting records at polling stations, is vital."
United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken said while in Japan that the Biden administration has "serious concerns that the result announced does not reflect the will or the votes of the Venezuelan people," according to the Miami Herald.
Their sentiments were shared by the United Kingdom's Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office, which was "concerned by allegations of serious irregularities in the counting and declared results." It called for the "swift and transparent publication of full, detailed results to ensure that the outcome reflects the votes of the Venezuelan people."
