(Tribune News Service) — Venezuela hardened the crackdown on any resistance to President Nicolás Maduro’s self-declared election win by calling for the arrests of opposition leaders María Corina Machado and Edmundo González.

Speaking on state television Tuesday, head of congress Jorge Rodríguez said González was leading a “fascist conspiracy” and that his campaign with Machado aimed to spark a civil war. Shortly after, Maduro said González was a “coward” if he didn’t assume responsibility for his actions.

“Respond, coward!” Maduro screamed into the camera. He also took aim at the U.S.

“Behind this plan is the U.S. empire, drug trafficking networks, Elon Musk and the fascist extreme right of the world,” he said. Musk has shown support for Machado and aimed insults at Maduro in a series of posts on X since the day of the vote.

The pronouncements seemed to escalate the already aggressive stance taken by the regime against the opposition, which says it has gathered 84% of voting tabulations to prove González is the rightful winner in Sunday’s election. They say they’re on track to have more than 8 million votes — around the 8.2 million the late Hugo Chávez received in the 2012 election.

Maduro had said in an X livestream on Monday night that protesters would be “severely” prosecuted after thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets decrying what they say is a fraudulent win. He held his phone up to the camera over and over again, showing videos of the demonstrations while emphasizing that he would engage security forces to maintain order. Earlier Tuesday, the government announced 749 arrests and detained prominent opposition figure Freddy Superlano.

Intimidating and arresting opposition leaders have long been part of Maduro’s tactics. More than 100 of the opposition’s aides and allies have been arrested in recent months, according to legal nonprofit Foro Penal. Juan Guaidó, who in 2019 was recognized internationally as interim president, was threatened with arrest and now lives in exile in Miami.

“Selective violence and intimidation have usually been enough to end protests,” Nicholas Watson, managing director at U.S.-based political consulting firm Teneo, wrote in a note to clients Tuesday morning. “A key question in the days ahead is whether the regime can bear the political costs and strains that would likely arise from a more lethal strategy of repression.”

There have been at least 300 protests nationwide since the election on Sunday, according to a report from the Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict. At least nine people have died.

In the capital of Caracas, protests have largely remained peaceful. Hundreds of people gathered on Tuesday along a main avenue in eastern Caracas, where Machado and González told their supporters that the opposition now had more proof of their party’s election win.

The opposition published the data onto a website Tuesday night for the international community and citizens alike to see, but said it had to make another after an apparent government cyberattack.

In the newly released site, Venezuelans are able to check their voting center tabulations by inputting their ID numbers. A scanned copy of the center’s vote receipt shows the total of voters and the specific votes for each candidate, as well as the signatures of the center’s supervisors and witnesses.

No other credible third-party vote counts have been released. The Carter Center, the sole election observer of international repute that monitored the election and planned to publicly report its findings, has not yet released its preliminary report as was planned Tuesday.

It wasn’t immediately clear what the next formal steps would be to proving fraud, but the opposition leaders said the timeline wasn’t clear and that non-violent demonstrations would continue.

Machado said that it was crucial that any demonstrations were peaceful and that no one should agitate other citizens, the police or military. She and González, however, never made mention of Superlano or his arrest.

“What we are combating is fraud,” Machado said. “The truth is the truth and we will defend it until the end.” The crowd yelled back, “We’re not afraid!”

The note from Teneo said “the situation is volatile and the outlook uncertain as an opposition emboldened by its performance and charismatic leadership faces off against a president whose legitimacy has been severely weakened.”

The fact that many of the protests have taken place in lower-income neighborhoods — historically strongholds of Chavismo, Venezuela’s brand of socialism — could also be alarming Maduro’s regime.

As tension boils within Venezuela, international pressure has continued to mount, with the U.S. saying it would consider travel bans and other new sanctions should Maduro not comply. Maduro has said he would meet international demands to release full records from Sunday’s vote.

Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who has been pressuring Maduro, said in an interview with Globo TV on Tuesday that the government must release the ballot tabulations. It’s up to the opposition to file a complaint if it doubts the results and wait for the court to make a decision, he added.

“I’m convinced it’s a normal, peaceful process,” he said in his first remarks about the situation in Venezuela.

Peru officially recognized González as president-elect.

The White House took a slightly stronger stand in a statement Tuesday afternoon, saying that the release of the voting data “is especially critical given that there are clear signs that the election results announced by Venezuela’s National Electoral Council do not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people as it was expressed at the ballot box on July 28.”

Meanwhile, Maduro’s government added a new angle to the claim that a cyberattack is preventing the release of voting data, saying North Macedonia was involved. Authorities there denied the allegation, with Digital Transformation Minister Stefan Andonovski telling reporters Tuesday that the government is monitoring the situation and has asked Venezuela for proof that any Macedonian citizens or institutions were involved.

In his address Tuesday, Maduro also said the government now has a special commission with the help of Russia and China to evaluate its cyber security system, particularly that of its electoral agency.

Earlier, Public Prosecutor Tarek William Saab accused opposition leader Machado of conspiring with exiled opposition leader Leopoldo López and another member of his party in an alleged plot to prevent voting records from reaching the electoral council’s headquarters.

A video shared on social media showed Superlano — who accompanied Machado and her stand-in candidate González during most of the campaign — being taken out of his car Tuesday and forced into an unmarked SUV by several men in all-black uniforms in a residential neighborhood in Caracas.

The 48-year-old former lawmaker is a popular opposition figure who participated in last year’s primaries before throwing his support behind Machado. On Monday, he was among the group that backed Machado’s claim that there is proof to show González won the election.

Superlano had been on the receiving end of veiled government threats for months, including from top Maduro allies Diosdado Cabello and Jorge Rodríguez.

He led the gubernatorial race for Barinas, a Chavista stronghold, in 2021 before the government halted the process, claiming he was ineligible to run due to a previous ban.

Superlano’s party Popular Will has been the subject of intense persecution by the Maduro government in the past decade, with most of its members currently in exile.

Nicolle Yapur and Slav Okov contributed to this report.

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