Shortly after midnight on Sunday night, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) released preliminary results of the country’s highly anticipated national elections, showing incumbent President Nicolás Maduro with 51.2 percent of the vote alongside 44.2 percent for opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. In turn, the opposition compiled its own numbers—based on CNE polling station data—and announced that González had won with 70 percent of the vote compared to only 30 percent for Maduro, claiming “the biggest margin difference” in the history of Venezuela’s presidential elections. 

Nevertheless, Maduro was swiftly proclaimed winner early Monday morning. In a televised speech he praised the “very high level of trust, security, transparency” in the country’s electoral process, and announced that “an attempt is being made to impose a coup d’état in Venezuela again of a fascist and counter revolutionary nature.”

Five days after the vote, the CNE has yet to release an official disaggregated vote tally, with authorities claiming the voting system was hacked by a foreign actor. Maduro has continued to hold firm on his victory, denouncing “a criminal attempt to seize power” that is “being directed by a perverse and macabre duo” represented by González and opposition leader María Corina Machado. On Monday and Tuesday, protests broke out across the country to dispute the claims that Maduro had won, and pro-government security forces clashed with protesters. According to government figures, more than 1,000 people have been detained in the post-election crackdown, and the human rights group Foro Penal says at least 11 people have been killed. 

The chaotic post-election climate marks, according to Esteban De Gori writing for Revista Anfibia, “una derrota cantada que no fue,” a predicted defeat that never was. Writing for NACLA, Ociel Alí López goes further, calling the vote outcome “a worst-case scenario” that has rapidly shuttered avenues for a democratic resolution to the country’s economic and political impasse. 

Amidst a media frenzy quick to denounce Maduro as an autocrat who has gone “full Ortega,” López also notes that the electoral process itself was generally peaceful and widely viewed as legitimate by national and international actors and observers, despite reports of intimidation and irregular hours at some polling stations. “We are dealing,” writes López, “with nothing more and nothing less than the final sum of the tally sheets that have already been officially printed, so the clamor is reduced to an official disclosure of the tally sheets so the numbers can be scrutinized and compared.”

The Carter Center, an Atlanta-based group that was invited by the Maduro government to observe the vote, said it was unable to verify the results of the election due to the “complete lack of transparency” in Maduro being declared winner. “The electoral authority’s failure to announce disaggregated results by polling station constitutes a serious breach of electoral principles,” said the group in a statement.

The lack of clarity around the vote tally has served to further isolate Maduro, after more than a year of negotiations between the opposition, the government, and Washington aimed at establishing conditions for free and fair elections and easing U.S. sanctions that have crippled the Venezuelan economy. On Monday, Venezuela’s foreign ministry said it was withdrawing Venezuela’s diplomats from seven Latin American countries that criticized the election results, including Argentina, Chile, and Peru, and demanded those countries’ governments do the same. Similarly, flights to and from Panamá, Peru, and the Dominican Republic have been suspended by Venezuelan authorities. 

On Tuesday, Peru became the first country to officially recognize Gonález as Venezuela’s president-elect. The Biden administration did the same on Thursday, with secretary of state Antony Blinken issuing a statement to congratulate González and noting the “overwhelming evidence” that he won the majority of votes. The announcement is likely to anger Maduro, and was deemed “imprudent” by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who noted that the position is “unlikely to resolve things.”

In response, the governments of Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico issued a joint statement on Thursday evening calling for “impartial verification” of the election results and expressing solidarity with the Venezuelan people. “Controversies over the electoral process must be resolved through institutional means,” the text reads. “The fundamental principle of popular sovereignty must be respected through the impartial verification of the results.”