Venezuelan opposition supporters gathered in Caracas on Wednesday, chanting “Liberty!” as their leader came out of hiding to lead a protest against President Nicolas Maduro’s reelection, widely denounced as fraudulent.
Maria Corina Machado, who has kept a low profile amid threats from Maduro after the presidential vote a month ago, vowed in front of followers to not stop fighting until the opposition’s claim to victory is recognized.
“They say that the regime will not yield. You know what: we are going to make it yield and (that) means respecting the will expressed on July 28,” she told a rally that attracted hundreds of supporters in an atmosphere of fear.
Machado arrived at the demonstration hiding her face under a black hoodie, which she took off only when she clambered onto the truck that served as her stage.
“Brave! Brave!” supporters chanted as the truck passed them.
“I’m fighting for Venezuela, to recover our democracy. We don’t want to live in a dictatorship,” demonstrator Laidy Molina, a 60-year-old nutritionist, told AFP.
Maduro has called for the arrest of Machado and the opposition’s presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced her on the ballot after the regime barred her from running.
Venezuela’s CNE electoral council — most of its members loyal to 61-year-old Maduro — declared him the winner hours after polls closed, giving him 52 percent of ballots cast without providing a full breakdown.
The opposition has published its own polling station-level records, which it says show that Gonzalez Urrutia, a 74-year-old retired diplomat, won by a landslide.
