Venezuelan opposition leader emerges from hiding at rally amid crackdown

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Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado emerged from hiding on Saturday to appear at an anti-government rally in Caracas, despite a violent crackdown on dissent by the socialist government of Nicolás Maduro.

Machado, who had not been seen in public since Wednesday after Maduro and members of his inner circle publicly called for her jailing, waved a Venezuelan flag from atop a small lorry to the cheers of thousands of supporters.

“We have never been as strong as today, never,” Machado said. “The presence of every one of you here in the streets shows the world the magnitude of our strength and our determination to reach the end.”

Protests broke out in the South American country on Monday after Maduro claimed victory in a presidential election by a seven point margin over opposition candidate Edmundo González. The National Electoral Council, which is controlled by Maduro’s allies, has refused to publish a detailed breakdown of the results.

The opposition declared González as the real winner with 7.1mn votes compared to Maduro’s 3.2mn, and posted thousands of polling station receipts as evidence. The US on Thursday recognised González as the winner, a move followed by Ecuador, Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Panama. Maduro’s victory was recognised by key allies China, Russia, Iran and Cuba, among others.

González, a retired diplomat, stood as a surrogate of the charismatic Machado, who was banned from running in January, months after she won a primary in a landslide. The Carter Center, a US non-profit organisation and the only independent body in Venezuela to evaluate the election, said the vote “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity at any of its stages”.

Maduro has referred the election dispute to the supreme court, which is controlled by the government. On Friday González did not show up to a hearing in which all 10 candidates in the election were summoned.

On Saturday, supporters from poorer neighbourhoods and the middle classes turned out in the well-to-do Las Mercedes neighbourhood to see Machado, apparently unbent by a crackdown on sporadic protests that began in downtrodden neighbourhoods of the capital on Monday. 

Since Monday, at least 19 people have been killed according to rights group Provea, and Maduro has claimed that 2,000 people have been arrested. Machado wrote in US media on Thursday that she had gone into hiding amid fears of her imminent arrest. The opposition’s campaign offices were broken into and vandalised in the early hours of Friday morning.

“We are all scared, but what scares me more is continuing under this tyranny,” said Luis Guersi, a 43-year-old engineer at the rally on Saturday.

Colonia Pérez, 34, a street vendor and mother of three, said she had turned out “for the future of my children”.

Maduro, who has presided over an economic crisis, deepening repression, and the exodus of 7.7mn Venezuelans since succeeding the late populist Hugo Chávez in 2013, has framed the protests against his self-declared re-election as a Washington-backed “fascist” coup attempt.

“The extreme right means hatred, vengeance, foreign interventionism and war,” he told supporters and public sector workers at a rival rally in central Caracas on Saturday.

Earlier on Saturday morning, US assistant secretary of state Brian Nichols said cases of arbitrary arrest, vandalism of opposition officers and violence towards peaceful protesters will be referred to the UN Human Rights agency.

“Having seen the will of the Venezuelan people at the ballot box, Maduro and his representatives have resorted to repression,” Nichols wrote on X. “These acts are unacceptable and demonstrate Maduro’s reliance on fear to cling to power.”

At Machado’s rally, supporters said they would continue to demonstrate in support of González’s victory.

“We want a free Venezuela,” said Deysi Barrios, a publicist whose family has fled the country. “If we don’t rid ourselves of this dictatorship now, we never will.”