World leaders and election observers are calling on Venezuela to release the full results of the country's presidential election, after President Nicolas Maduro was formally declared the winner of an election the opposition says was marred by fraud.
Few shops were open and public transport was scarce in Venezuela's normally bustling capital Caracas on Monday as the National Electoral Council (CNE) said Maduro had secured another six-year term as president.
Elvis Amoroso of the CNE said that the Venezuelan people had re-elected Maduro by majority as president “for the period 2025-2031.”
In a televised address from Caracas, Maduro, 61, claimed, without providing evidence, that “there is an attempt being made to impose a coup d'état in Venezuela.”
“We already know this film and this time there will be no weakness,” he added, assuring that in Venezuela “the law will be respected.”
The electoral authority, controlled by Maduro loyalists, has not released tallies from each of the 30,000 polling stations across Venezuela after Sunday's vote, fueling questions and allegations of fraud.
Opposition officials earlier said that tallies they collected from campaign representatives at polling stations had shown opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez had defeated Maduro.
But the CNE said Gonzalez failed to defeat the president, garnering 44 percent support compared to Maduro's 51 percent.
“Venezuelans and the entire world know what happened,” Gonzalez said in his first remarks after the results were announced. He and his allies called on their supporters to remain calm and on the government to avoid fuelling the conflict.
Eating breakfast on a bench next to a closed business in Caracas, Deyvid Cadenas, a 28-year-old Venezuelan voter, said Monday morning that he felt cheated.
“I don’t believe in yesterday’s results,” Cadenas, who voted for the first time in a presidential election on Sunday, told The Associated Press.
As political uncertainty continues to swirl in the South American nation, leaders across the region and around the world have urged Venezuela to release a full breakdown of the election results.
A spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the UN chief was calling for “full transparency” and “the timely publication of election results and their breakdown by polling station.”
“The Secretary-General is confident that all electoral disputes will be addressed and resolved peacefully, and calls on all Venezuelan political leaders and their supporters to exercise restraint,” Stephane Dujarric told reporters at UN headquarters in New York.
The Carter Center, which sent a team of electoral observers to Venezuela for the elections, also called on the electoral authority to immediately publish the results of the presidential vote by polling station.
“The information contained in the results forms at the voting table level transmitted to the CNE is fundamental for our evaluation and important for all Venezuelans,” the group said in a statement.
'They robbed us'
Maduro, who first came to power in 2013 following the death of his mentor and predecessor Hugo Chavez, has presided over an economic collapse that has pushed millions of people to flee the country.
Venezuela has also been isolated internationally amid sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and others, which have crippled an already struggling oil industry.
Reporting from Buenos Aires, Argentina, Al Jazeera's Teresa Bo said there was an immediate sense of disappointment among Venezuelans “who had hoped for change” at the polls on Sunday.
Many also expressed anger at the election results and how they were announced. “The crucial data [showing] “The source of the votes has not yet been revealed,” he said.
Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek Saab, an ally of Maduro, said on Monday that his office had launched an investigation into an alleged cyberattack on the electoral system.
Saab accused opposition leaders of involvement but offered no evidence to back up his claim.
“What we are seeing right now from the government is a government that says it won the election and that it is under attack,” Bo said.
“This is not what people on the street are saying. Millions of Venezuelans are convinced that there was massive fraud.”
On Monday morning, a cacophony of banging could be heard in the Petare and 23 de Enero neighborhoods of Caracas, traditionally important bastions of the working class United Socialist Party, as residents took part in a “cacerolazo,” a traditional Latin American protest in which people bang pots and pans.
“Maduro yesterday shattered my biggest dream, to see my only daughter again, who left for Argentina three years ago,” pensioner Dalia Romero, 59, told Reuters news agency in Maracaibo, a city in northwestern Venezuela.
“I stayed here alone with breast cancer so she could work there and send me money for treatment,” she said through tears. “Now I know I will die alone without ever seeing her again.”
Ender Núñez, a 42-year-old driver from Maracaibo, also expressed his disappointment. “We are going to be in this nightmare for six more years and what hurts us the most is that they robbed us,” he said.
Emergency meeting requested
Meanwhile, nine Latin American countries have called for an emergency meeting of the permanent council of the Organization of American States (OAS) due to their concerns about the election results.
Panama, one of the countries, also said it would put diplomatic relations with Venezuela “on hold” and withdraw diplomatic personnel from the country until a full review is conducted.
“We are suspending diplomatic relations until a complete review of the voting records and the computerized voting system is carried out,” Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino said during a press conference.
Al Jazeera's Bo said the call for an OAS meeting was not surprising, as the governments involved are mostly “right-wing governments”. [that] “they have traditionally opposed Venezuela.”
Instead, he said, “all eyes are now on what left-wing or centre-left governments in the region will say” about the results.
On Monday morning, the government of leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva called for an “impartial verification” of the results.
Gabriel Boric, Chile’s leftist president, said his government “will not recognize any result that is not verifiable” and urged Venezuela to provide “full transparency of the electoral registers and the process.”
