'We Were Robbed': Despair In Venezuela After Maduro Victory

Thousands of furious Venezuelans took to the streets Monday to protest what they called a stolen election, tearing down posters of President Nicolas Maduro as the banging of pots and pans echoed through Caracas.

Venezuelans weary from years of food shortages, dwindling household incomes and a leftist government criticized as authoritarian expressed despair after the electoral council loyal to Maduro said he won a third term in Sunday's voting.

The opposition, which polls had predicted would win by a landslide, said it took more than two-thirds of the votes in the oil-rich country whose economy lies in ruins.

One opposition march left from the shantytown of Petare and reached the city center under driving rain, only to be met by civil guards who fired tear gas at the demonstrators.

"We were robbed last night," an angry Melanie Fiser, 22, told AFP, rejecting the official results.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) gave Maduro 51 percent of the votes, against 44 percent for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, the soft-spoken proxy for wildly popular opposition leader Maria Corina Machado.

Courts loyal to Maduro barred Machado from running for president, citing what she and many Venezuelans call bogus corruption charges.

Fiser said Gonzalez Urrutia was the real winner of the poll, and that she was sick of hardship and living on food handouts from the government.

Most Venezuelans live on just a few dollars a month, and endure shortages of food and such basics as soap and toilet paper.

"I do not want aid. What I want is for Nicolas to leave," Fiser said as demonstrators chanted a rhyming slogan that said just that.

The opposition rejected the results announced by the electoral council, but has not yet called for protests. Monday's unrest, starting with early morning pot-banging from windows and balconies, appeared to be spontaneous.

Maduro, without giving evidence, denounced what he called an incipient coup. "They are trying out their first failed steps to destabilize Venezuela," he said.

"I felt impotent. I went outside and screamed," said one female resident, slamming the "false results" with tears in her eyes and requesting anonymity out of fear.

Protests also erupted in areas of Caracas that are traditionally supportive of Maduro and backed his famed socialist predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.

"Where are the five million people celebrating Maduro?" a young man yelled from his apartment window.

Angelika Daron, 46, told AFP she had worked as an election monitor for the opposition and that in her view Gonzalez Urrutia had "won by a landslide."

"They stole the election," she said, crying on the sidewalk.

Maduro has been in power since 2013 and is now set to rule until at least 2031.

Economic woes in the once-wealthy country have pushed more than seven million of its 30 million citizens to emigrate. Now, little is holding back those who have remained.

"Even though I love my country... I know that the only way out is to leave," said 34-year-old nurse Veruska Donado.

"Tyranny always wins and cheating always wins."

Mariana Perez, a 21-year-old shop assistant, said the result had "killed the dreams of many young people who were hopeful, who want to get ahead."

While many expressed a fear of protesting openly, Jenny Gil, 56, was bashing her cooking pot in the middle of a street in Candelaria, in the heart of the capital.

"Edmundo won. I was present at the voting station at the Andres Eloy school and we counted vote by vote, and he won, I have evidence that he won," she told AFP.

Not far from where Gil was protesting, a group of youngsters climbed a streetlight to tear down one of the hundreds of posters bearing Maduro's face that line the streets of Caracas.

"They robbed us," shouted a motorcyclist driving past the small protest, while others honked their horns in support.