Electricity, Internet and mobile communications in Venezuela were almost completely cut off for 12 hours. Now they have started to recover.
Thefirst reports of power and communications outages appeared early in the morning of August 30. Full or partial shutdowns occurred in 23 states and the metropolitan region. Venezuelan authorities believe that the cause of these problems is sabotage by the opposition, this time in particular in light of its accusations of manipulating the results of the presidential elections, which were held in the country at the end of July and were won by Nicolás Maduro. Maduro himself called the electricity situation a “desperate attack of fascism” in his Telegram channel. and “criminal attack“, promising to overcome difficulties.
On the afternoon of August 30, the head of the Venezuelan Ministry of the Interior, Diosdado Cabello, announced on VTV that “the network has begun to recover”. At the moment there are reports from local residents that the situation is normalizing.
In the last decade, the problem of power and communication outages has occurred quite often in Venezuela. Local authorities believe that this is due to the opposition's attempt to destabilize the situation in the country, but experts often see this as primarily economic reasons, in particular the lack of investment in the energy sector.
Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on July 28. As reported by the National Electoral Council after processing almost 97% of the protocols, 51.95% of the citizens voted for the current President Nicolás Maduro, and 43.18% for his main rival, the far-right opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia. One of the opposition leaders, María Corina Machado, said on election day that Gonzalez's team would not concede defeat in the election. The next day, protests and riots broke out in downtown Caracas. According to Venezuelan authorities, more than 2,200 participants in the riots were detained for arson and other crimes.
Russia, Bolivia, Honduras, Iran, China, Cuba and Nicaragua congratulated Maduro on his victory. A number of countries have not recognized the current president's re-election, including Argentina, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Panama, Peru, USA, Uruguay, Chile.