Photo: Collected
One month after a presidential vote it claims was stolen by incumbent Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's opposition has called for mass rallies Wednesday to press for the recognition of its election "victory."
It will be the fourth round of organized demonstrations held since the July 28 vote, which saw both sides claim victory but Maduro declared the winner by the National Electoral Council (CNE), which is staffed mainly by his allies.
Several Latin American countries, the United States and European Union have called on the CNE to release polling-station-level data to verify the outcome, which the council said it could not do due to a computer hack.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado and presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia have been mostly in hiding since then, with Maduro calling for the duo to be arrested.
Spontaneous protests erupted in the hours after he was declared the winner of the poll, with at least 25 civilians killed and more than 2,400 arrests carried out.
Machado came out of hiding for the last two organized opposition rallies on August 3 and 17 in Caracas.
She also attended the first, on July 30, where Gonzalez Urrutia was seen in public for the last time.
"Everyone to the... street!" Machado appealed in a post on X on Monday.
"We'll see each other at 11:00am (1500 GMT) in Caracas, in the rest of the country and also in several cities around the world. We will not rest, let's go to the end!!"
The Unitary Platform opposition coalition urged people to turn out "with your children, with your grandchildren" to push for the recognition of "our glorious victory" in the face of Maduro's "fraud."
Messenger/Disha
