Masked assailants ransack Venezuela opposition's headquarters as post-election tensions mount

The election campaign headquarters of opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez stands after being ransacked overnight in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, five days after the disputed presidential election. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

CARACAS, Venezuela -

Half a dozen masked assailants ransacked the headquarters of Venezuela's opposition Friday in an escalation of violence against President Nicolas Maduro's opponents after several countries called for proof of his claim he had won the disputed presidential election.

Assailants broke down doors and hauled away valuable documents and equipment in the raid around 3 a.m., opposition leader Maria Corina Machado's party said. Several walls were covered in black spray paint.

The raid follows threats by top officials, including Maduro, to arrest Machado, who has gone into hiding while still urging Venezuelans and the international community to challenge Sunday's election results.

The Biden administration has thrown its support firmly behind the opposition, recognizing candidate Edmundo Gonzalez as the victor and discrediting the National Electoral Council's official results. Gonzalez was tapped in April as a last-minute stand-in for Machado, who was barred from running for political office.

The U.S. announcement late Thursday followed calls from multiple governments, including Maduro's close regional allies, for Venezuela's electoral authorities to release precinct-level vote counts, as it has during previous elections.

Maduro said during a news conference Friday that the U.S. should stay out of Venezuela's politics.

Gonzalez, whose location is also unknown, posted a message on X thanking the U.S. "for recognizing the will of the Venezuelan people reflected in our electoral victory and for supporting the process of restoring democratic norms in Venezuela."

The electoral body declared Maduro the winner Monday, but the main opposition coalition revealed hours later that it had collected copies of more than 80 per cent of the country's 30,000 voting tallies — printouts from the electronic voting machines — and that they show Gonzalez prevailed by a more than two-to-one margin.

"Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela's July 28 presidential election," U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

During his televised news conference, Maduro said members of the opposition "plan to carry out an attack" in a Caracas neighbourhood near where Machado had called on supporters to gather with their families Saturday. He played audio and showed an image of a purported WhatsApp chat that he said was proof of the planned attack.

He said he has ordered the armed forces to guard the neighborhood. That order could limit the ability of opposition supporters to gather, but it would not affect the planned demonstration of ruling party supporters elsewhere in the city.

On Friday, Venezuelan electoral authorities gave an updated vote count, but not the precinct-level tallies that have been demanded.

National Electoral Council President Elvis Amoroso said that with 96.9 per cent of tally sheets counted, Maduro's margin of victory was more than eight percentage points over Gonzalez: 52 per cent to 43.2 per cent. He attributed the delay in updating results to "massive attacks" on the "technological infrastructure."

An aerial view of Caracas, Venezuela, Thursday, Aug. 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix)

 Blinken's announcement came amid a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to convince their fellow leftist to allow an impartial audit of the vote. On Thursday, the governments of the three countries issued a joint statement calling on Venezuela's electoral authorities "to move forward expeditiously and publicly release" detailed voting data.

On Friday, Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the lower house of the Russian parliament, said Russian election monitors witnessed Maduro's legitimate victory and accused the U.S. of stirring tensions in the country.

Venezuela sits atop the world's largest proven crude reserves and once boasted Latin America's most advanced economy, but it entered into a free fall marked by 130,000 per cent hyperinflation and widespread shortages after Maduro took the helm in 2013. More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have fled the country since 2014, the largest exodus in Latin America's recent history.

U.S. oil sanctions have only deepened the misery and the Biden administration — which had been easing those restrictions — is now likely to ramp them up again unless Maduro agrees to some sort of transition.

"He's counting on being able to wait this out and people will get tired of demonstrating," said Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow at the Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. "The problem is, the country is in a death spiral and there's no chance the economy will be able to recover without the legitimacy that comes from a fair election."

Thousands of opposition supporters took to the streets Monday after the National Electoral Council declared Maduro the winner of the election. The government said it arrested hundreds of protesters.

On Wednesday, Maduro asked Venezuela's highest court to conduct an audit of the election, but that request drew almost immediate criticism from foreign observers who said the court — which like most institutions is controlled by the government — lacks the independence to perform a credible review.

On Friday afternoon, Gonzalez was notably absent — an empty chair beside Maduro — when the court convened the nine presidential candidates.

Supreme Tribunal President Caryslia Rodriguez called on the candidates and their parties to provide all required documents as the court seeks to audit the results.

Maduro took the opportunity to call Gonzalez "the candidate of fascism" and promised to hand over all of the voting tallies.

Later, Maduro and his campaign manager, National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez, attempted to discredit the tally sheets posted online by the opposition since Monday, arguing that they were missing signatures from the electoral council representative as well as poll workers and party representatives.

They didn't acknowledge that soldiers, civilian militia, police and loyalists of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, on Sunday blocked some opposition representatives from entering the polls, witnessing the vote, and signing and obtaining copies of tally sheets.

Goodman reported from Medellin, Colombia. Associated Press correspondents Maria Verza in Mexico City and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed.