Hundreds of protesters clashed with police in Venezuela's capital on Monday, April 15 as the government rejected opposition demands for a vote recount after Sunday's contested election to replace the late Hugo Chavez, Reuters said.
Police fired tear gas to disperse young demonstrators who threw rocks in an upscale district of Caracas after opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles refused to recognize the narrow victory of Chavez's preferred successor, Nicolas Maduro, and called for peaceful demonstrations.
Capriles hopes protests will highlight the weakness of Maduro's mandate and stir up opposition outrage over accusations that the electoral authority is biased in favor of the ruling party.
Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver, called on his supporters to mobilize peacefully on Tuesday. He is due to be sworn in on Friday, likely leaving Capriles' call for demonstrations as a symbolic show of defiance.
Opposition sources told Reuters their count showed Capriles won by more than 300,000 votes. His team says it has evidence of some 3,200 election day irregularities, ranging from allegations of voters using fake IDs to intimidation of volunteers at polling centers.
Venezuela's electoral authority on Monday formally declared Maduro the winner of the election, saying he won 50.8 percent of the vote, against 49.0 percent for Capriles.
"The majority is the majority. Democracy must be respected," said Maduro, who was handpicked by Chavez to continue his self-declared socialist revolution just weeks before dying of cancer on March 5. "The opposition cannot launch an ambush to jeopardize the will of the people."
