The Venezuelan opposition, organized around the Democratic Unitary Platform, called for a national and international mobilization on Saturday, August 17 to protest the electoral results of July 28, which saw the victory of Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
The march has been dubbed the “Great World Protest For The Truth” and asks participants to bring their voting record (the actas) to the mobilization sites. The National Campaign Command of María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, claims that there will be mobilizations in more than 115 cities.
Machado has assured that the opposition has the electoral tallies that prove their alleged victory. Her narrative is based on the alleged evidence that the opposition decided to not submit to the Supreme Court of Justice.
For now, the Supreme Court of Justice, at the request of the PSUV, is reviewing the vote tallies submitted by all political parties that participated in the presidential elections, except for the vote tallies that the candidacy of Edmundo Gonzalez claims to have.
Chavismo will defend electoral results
Vice President of Venezuela Delcy Rodríguez affirmed that the vote tallies presented by the opposition and posted on their website have proven to be manipulated, and do not constitute significant proof to back up claims of fraud.
Rodríguez denounced the opposition’s mobilizations as violent and seeking to create chaos. The nation’s Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, affirmed that the demonstrations have resulted in the death of more than 20 Venezuelans, and dubbed the street actions of several opponents as “terrorist acts”.
Given the opposition march on August 17, Chavista forces have called for a national march to defend the electoral results and peace. In his TV program ‘Con el mazo dando‘, Diosdado Cabello, a member of the National Assembly of Venezuela, stated that “on Saturday we are going to the streets to march throughout Venezuela, we are going to the streets to continue celebrating the victory of the Bolivarian Revolution.”
Once again, the two most important political tendencies in Venezuela will go head to head and measure who has greater mobilization capacity this Saturday.
For now, the future of Venezuela is not entirely clear. On the one hand, the arguments of Chavismo are based on the proclamation of Maduro as the winner of the latest presidential elections. On the other hand, the opposition seeks the deposition of the current government through street demonstrations at national level and the isolation of the Chavista government by its allies at the international level.
