CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Thousands of people rallied in the streets of Venezuela’s capital Saturday, waving the national flag and singing the national anthem in support of an opposition candidate they believe won the presidential election by a landslide.
Authorities have declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s election but have yet to produce voting tallies to prove he won. Maduro also urged his backers to attend his own “mother of all marches” Saturday elsewhere in Caracas.
The government arrested hundreds of opposition supporters who took to the streets in the days after the disputed poll, and the president and his cadres have threatened to also lock up opposition leader, María Corina Machado, and her hand-picked presidential candidate, Edmundo González.
On Saturday, supporters chanted and sang as Machado arrived at the rally in Caracas. Ecstatic, they crushed around her as she climbed onto a raised platform on a truck to address the crowd.
“After six days of brutal repression, they thought they were going to silence us, intimidate or paralyze us,” she told them. “The presence of every one of you here today represents the best of Venezuela.”
Machado, who has been barred by Maduro’s government from running for office for 15 years, had been in hiding since Tuesday, saying her life and freedom are at risk. Masked assailants ransacked the opposition’s headquarters on Friday, taking documents and vandalizing the space.
On Saturday, she held aloft a Venezuelan flag and promised that the government whose policies forced millions of Venezuelans to leave was finally coming to an end.
“We have overcome all the barriers! We have knocked them all down,” Machado said. “Never has the regime been so weak.”
González, who remains in hiding, was not seen at the event, and when the rally ended, Machado was given a non-descript shirt and whisked away on the back of a motorcycle.
I live in South America and I’m gonna tell you something EVERYBODY here knows: Maduro is a fucking psychopath. I’m seeing a lot of people saying that because the US is interfering, it must be false, but let me tell you: fuck the US, but this is real. Maduro should be killed.
I’m not arguing for Maduro, I personally don’t like him. But if your alternative is the violent overturn of elections because you don’t like the candidate that the majority chose, until there’s any real evidence of election fraud, I can’t support that and I don’t think a majority of democrats (in the non-US sense of the word) would.
He’s the successor of Hugo Chavez and is president since 2013. Hugo Chavez was the president since 1999. Venezuela was once a great place to live but now people are leaving the country because they are going hungry. Do you need more evidence?