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NYTIMES
Protests broke out Monday in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, with hundreds of young people marching through the streets furious over a presidential election in which the incumbent, Nicolás Maduro, declared victory despite widespread accusations of fraud, officially proclaiming the election decided without releasing the full vote counts.
The United States and countries around the world denounced the official results of Sunday’s vote, which did not appear to match statistical estimates based on partial counts and other data that showed the president losing by a wide margin.
By Monday afternoon, the Venezuelan government announced it had kicked out the diplomatic missions of seven Latin American countries that had condemned the official electoral results.
The opposition leader, María Corina Machado, announced on Monday evening that her movement had received paper tallies from 73 percent of the country’s voting stations and refuted the government’s claims. Those tallies showed that Mr. Maduro’s opponent, Edmundo González, had received 3.5 million more votes than the president.
Mr. González called the margin “mathematically irreversible.”
The move by the electoral authority to declare victory but not release detailed voting results, which it had routinely done in past elections, intensified the sense among many Venezuelans and international observers that the election had essentially been stolen.
But Mr. Maduro appeared to dig in, with his government announcing that it was investigating top opposition leaders, accusing them of hacking the electoral computer systems.
Sporadic demonstrations in Caracas on Monday morning grew throughout the day as angry residents headed toward the center of the capital, reaching traditional government strongholds that had not seen political unrest for more than two decades. Large groups of young men walked more than five miles down main roads, tearing down Mr. Maduro’s campaign posters and chanting, “They robbed us!”
Another group of hundreds of people tried to make it to the presidential palace, lighting tires on fire along the way. Pro-government paramilitaries responded by opening fire in the air, and the police used tear gas to disperse the protests.
Protesters in Cumaná, 250 miles east of the capital, tried to reach the country’s election headquarters, but they were pushed back by the National Guard.
The disputed election put renewed attention on the Biden administration’s incentives to Venezuela. United States officials’ negotiations with the authoritarian government and easing of sanctions on the country’s vital oil industry had helped pave the way for Sunday’s voting. For now, the administration said it was not considering revoking any licenses to sell oil.
But the Biden administration also demanded that the Maduro government release vote tabulations, and warned that it risks diplomatic isolation as more countries — including some crucial allies — questioned the lack of transparency of an election that appeared to violate international norms.
The Brazilian government, led by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, distanced itself from Mr. Maduro on Monday, despite years of friendly relations between the two leftist leaders.
In a cautiously worded statement, Mr. Lula’s government praised “the peaceful nature” of the election, but then called for “the impartial verification of results” and the release of detailed results from polling stations.
Colombia, led by Gustavo Petro, a leftist who in the first months of his presidency made drawing closer to Venezuela a priority, also called for detailed tallies to be released and for international observers who monitored the vote to provide their assessment.
“It’s important to clear up any doubts about the results,” Colombia’s foreign minister, Luis Gilberto Murillo, wrote on X.
Brazil’s and Colombia’s responses were noteworthy because they showed that two of Venezuela’s biggest neighbors were seeking answers before they would recognize Mr. Maduro’s claim of re-election.
On Monday night, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico were negotiating a joint statement to call on Venezuela to release voting records from each polling station, hoping that a unified stance from three of the region’s most influential nations would help put pressure on Mr. Maduro, according to two Brazilian diplomatic officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
Celso Amorim, Mr. Lula’s chief foreign policy adviser, also met separately with Mr. Maduro and Mr. González in Caracas on Monday. In an hourlong meeting at Venezuela’s presidential palace, Mr. Maduro promised to deliver the full voting results, though he did not provide a clear timeline for doing so, according to one of the Brazilian officials.
The official said Brazil viewed the promise as a small step but was remaining realistic. Mr. Amorim told reporters that he could not trust vote tallies presented by both the Maduro and opposition camps because neither had provided proof.
President Biden and Mr. Lula planned to speak about Venezuela on Tuesday, according to the Brazilian official.
The Venezuelan electoral authority, run by a member of the ruling party, announced early Monday that partial results of Sunday’s election showed that Mr. Maduro had received 51.2 percent of the vote and was the clear winner.
Mr. Maduro, 61, who has been in power since 2013, had faced off against Mr. González, 74, a former diplomat, who the electoral authority claimed had received 44.2 percent of the vote.
Mr. González was essentially a stand-in for Ms. Machado, a popular opposition leader who had been disqualified from running.
Ms. Machado called the official results “impossible.”
“Everybody knows what happened,” she said.
Much of the dispute around Sunday’s election focuses on the transparency of the vote count.
The electoral authority has yet to publish any results on its website, breaking with tradition. Opposition poll witnesses at many voting stations were also prevented by electoral officials and soldiers from receiving a paper tally of results, in breach of the regulations and precedent.
The paper tallies record the votes cast at each voting machine. Without them, it is difficult for the opposition to add up individual tallies to cross-reference — and dispute — the national results.
The opposition also said there were irregularities in the way that results were digitally transmitted from the voting stations to the electoral system.
Ms. Machado said that opposition volunteers scanned and posted the paper tallies online so everyone could see the evidence. By Monday evening, she said they had received 73 percent of the tallies, showing Mr. González had won in a landslide.
The United States has tried to push Mr. Maduro from power for years, and the Trump administration responded to a flawed 2018 presidential vote in which Mr. Maduro claimed victory by imposing a series of tough economic sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry.
The Biden administration had lifted some of those penalties in exchange for a commitment from the Maduro government to work toward competitive elections.
Mr. Kirby would not discuss whether the United States would respond with further sanctions.
“We’re watching,” he said. “The world’s watching. I won’t get ahead of a decision that hasn’t been made here in terms of consequences.”
The Biden administration faces a difficult choice. Sanctions could deepen Venezuela’s economic woes and increase migration toward the United States ahead of the presidential election in November. But not taking a tough stance could strengthen Mr. Maduro and allow Republicans to attack the U.S. president as weak on autocrats.
Mr. Maduro said the United States should not meddle in other nations’ affairs.
Venezuela’s justice minister, Tarek William Saab, said Monday that the government was looking into acts of vandalism against government installations, and said three opposition leaders, including Ms. Machado, were under investigation for a hack of Venezuela’s electoral system.
Mr. Maduro said the opposition was prepared to use a tired tactic: crying fraud even before the election had taken place.
“I’ve seen this movie a few times,” Mr. Maduro said.
Mr. Maduro did receive support from allied leaders in Cuba, Serbia, Nicaragua, Russia, Bolivia and Honduras, who applauded the results.
Daniel Ortega, who as president of Nicaragua has overseen the end of democracy in his own country, congratulated Mr. Maduro. And Cuba’s leader, Miguel Díaz-Canel Bermúdez, said Mr. Maduro had “defeated the pro-imperialist opposition.”
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said he was eager to strengthen ties between the two countries. “Russian-Venezuelan relations have the character of a strategic partnership,” Mr. Putin said in a message to Mr. Maduro, the Kremlin said in a statement.
Iran and China also congratulated Mr. Maduro.
But across Latin America, leaders of Uruguay, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Argentina and Guatemala all denounced the results.
“The Maduro regime must understand that the results they publish are difficult to believe,” Chile’s leftist leader, Gabriel Boric, said on X.