Masked assailants ransack Venezuela opposition’s headquarters as post-election tensions mount

Caracas Venezuela — Half a dozen masked assailants looted the Venezuelan opposition headquarters on Friday in an escalation of violence against of President Nicolás Maduro opponents after several countries asked for proof of his claim that he had won the disputed presidential election.

The attackers broke down doors and took valuable documents and equipment in the attack at around 3am, according to the opposition leader. Maria Corina Machado said the party. Several walls were covered in black spray paint.

The raid follows threats from senior officials, including Maduro, to arrest Machado, who has gone into hiding as he continues to urge Venezuelans and the international community to question the results of Sunday’s elections.

The Biden administration has provided its firm support to the opposition, recognizing the candidate Edmundo González as the winner and discrediting the official results of the National Electoral Council. González was chosen in April as a last-minute replacement for Machado, who was banned from running for political office.

The U.S. announcement Thursday night followed calls from multiple governments, including Maduro’s close regional allies, for Venezuela’s electoral authorities to release vote counts at the electoral district level, as they did in previous elections. .

Maduro said during a news conference Friday that the United States should stay out of Venezuelan politics.

González, whose whereabouts are also unknown, posted a message on X thanking the United States “for recognizing the will of the Venezuelan people reflected in our electoral victory and for supporting the process of restoring democratic norms in Venezuela.”

The electoral body declared Maduro the winner on Monday, but the main opposition coalition revealed hours later that there had been collected copies of more than 80% of the country’s 30,000 votes – printouts of electronic voting machines – and which show that González prevailed by a margin of more than 2 to 1.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia obtained the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” said US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, in a statement.

During his televised news conference, Maduro said members of the opposition “plan to carry out an attack” in a Caracas neighborhood near where Machado had called on his supporters to meet with their families on Saturday. He played audio and showed an image of an alleged WhatsApp chat that he said was proof of the planned attack.

He said he has ordered the armed forces to monitor the neighborhood. That order could limit the ability of opposition supporters to gather, but would not affect the planned rally by ruling party supporters elsewhere in the city.

On Friday, Venezuelan electoral authorities provided an updated vote count, but not the district-level counts that have been demanded.

The president of the National Electoral Council, Elvis Amoroso, said that with 96.9% of the minutes counted, Maduro’s margin of victory was more than 8 percentage points over González: 52% to 43.2%. He attributed the delay in updating the results to “massive attacks” on the “technological infrastructure.”

Blinken’s announcement came amid a series of diplomatic efforts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to convince their fellow leftists to allow an impartial audit of the vote. On Thursday, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela’s electoral authorities to “move quickly and publicly publish” detailed election data.

On Friday, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said Russian election observers witnessed Maduro’s legitimate victory and accused the United States of provoking tensions in the country.

Venezuela is at the top The largest proven crude oil reserves in the world. and once boasted Latin America’s most advanced economy, but entered a free fall marked by 130,000% hyperinflation and widespread shortages after Maduro took command in 2013. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country. since 2014, the biggest exodus in the recent history of Latin America.

US oil sanctions have only deepened the misery and the Biden administration, which had been easing those restrictions, is now likely to increase them again unless Maduro agrees. some kind of transition.

“He’s counting on being able to wait and people will get tired of demonstrating,” said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. “The problem is that the country is in a death spiral and there is no chance that the economy can recover without the legitimacy that comes from fair elections.”

Thousands of opposition supporters went out to the streets Monday after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the elections. The government said it arrested hundreds of protesters.

Maduro asked Venezuela’s highest court on Wednesday perform an audit of the elections, but that request provoked almost immediate criticism from foreign observers who said the court, which like most institutions is controlled by the government, lacks the independence to conduct a credible review.

On Friday afternoon, González was noticeably absent (an empty chair next to Maduro) when the court summoned the nine presidential candidates.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Caryslia Rodriguez asked candidates and their parties to provide all required documents as the court seeks to audit the results.

Maduro took the opportunity to call González “the candidate of fascism” and promised to hand over all the voting records.

Subsequently, Maduro and his campaign manager, the president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, attempted to discredit the minutes published online by the opposition since Monday, arguing that they were missing signatures from the representative of the electoral council, as well as from election workers and party representatives.

They did not acknowledge that soldiers, civilian militiamen, police and loyalists of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela on Sunday prevented some opposition representatives from entering the polls, witnessing the vote and signing and obtaining copies of the tally sheets.

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Goodman reported from Medellín, Colombia. Associated Press correspondents María Verza in Mexico City and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.