MARACAIBO/VALENCIA, Venezuela (Reuters) – Dueling rallies were set to take place in Venezuela on Wednesday, as both the opposition and the ruling party urged supporters to mark the one-month anniversary of last month’s disputed election and arrests of opposition figures continued.
Venezuela’s electoral council has proclaimed President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, as the winner of the July 28 election, but has not published complete voting tallies. Venezuela’s opposition has published its own tallies showing a landslide win for its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez.
The disagreement has sparked international calls for the release of full tallies, deadly protests, and moves by authorities to arrest opposition figures and journalists.
Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado told Reuters on Tuesday that peaceful street protests and international pressure still have the potential to unseat Maduro.
Later that day, opposition groups reported at least two arrests of staff, including a lawyer for Machado’s movement.
“Around the world the cry of Venezuelans is being heard,” Machado – the main face of the opposition – told supporters at a lunchtime rally in Caracas, urging them to keep up pressure and “at the same time protect one another, because what the regime has let loose is brutal.”
Ruling party supporters are expected to gather at a separate rally in the capital later in the day.
In the western oil city of Maracaibo, fewer than 100 opposition supporters gathered for a brief protest early on Wednesday, closely watched by police.
“This is the last gathering I’ll attend, I’m leaving the country on Friday,” said engineering student Stiward Prieto, 23. He said he lost his job at a public power company after the election and that he had to support his elderly father, a retired teacher with diabetes.
“It hurts me to leave like this, but there is no option,” Prieto said as he waved a Venezuelan flag.
Small crowds also gathered in San Cristobal, near the border with Colombia, in the central cities of Barquisimeto and Valencia and in eastern Puerto Ordaz.
Many attendees were older adults, Reuters witnesses said. Gonzalez and Machado, aged 74 and 56, respectively, focused much of their campaign rhetoric on older populations who would like to see migrant children and grandchildren return home.
“My family was huge – between aunts and uncles, cousins, siblings, children and others we were nearly 600 people. Now there are only 25. There are family members in Chile, Turkey, Spain, Italy, Australia, everywhere,” said retired teacher Maria Carrasquel, 63. Her public pension, equivalent to $5 a month, was not enough to buy food, she added.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left in recent years and others have said that they would seek to go too if Maduro’s socialists continued in power.
Protests since the vote have led to at least 27 deaths. Human rights group Foro Penal says some 1,780 people are being held as political prisoners, including 114 adolescents.
Gonzalez, who along with Machado, is being investigated for incitement and other crimes by Attorney General Tarek Saab, has ignored two summons to testify about the opposition website where voting tallies have been posted.
If he ignores a third a warrant could be issued for his arrest.
Venezuela’s national electoral authority and its top court say Maduro won just over half the votes in the election. The electoral council says it has not yet posted detailed tallies because a cyberattack affected its systems.
Maduro made major changes to his cabinet on Tuesday, shifting his rhetoric away from the election and toward promised changes.
He added the oil ministry to the brief of Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, who has built close relationships with business people while serving as finance minister, and returned ruling party leader and famed hard-liner Diosdado Cabello to the cabinet as interior and justice minister.
He also named Hector Obregon as the new head of state oil company PDVSA.
Dozens of employees at PDVSA, the oil ministry and other entities have been forced to resign since the election over their political views, workers and unions have said.
(Reporting by Mariela Nava in Maracaibo, Tibisay Romero in Valencia, Tathiana Ortiz in San Cristobal, Keren Torres in Barquisimeto, Maria Ramirez in Puerto Ordaz and Deisy Buitrago, Vivian Sequera and Mayela Armas in Caracas; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)
