CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP)— Thousands of people, led by a top opposition figure, gathered across Venezuela on Saturday to protest the widely disputed reelection of President Nicolas Maduro, as his supporters responded to his own call for competing rallies.

Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado thrilled supporters in Caracas when she made a surprise appearance in a truck bearing a banner reading “Venezuela has won!” She spent much of the week in hiding after what she said was a threat by Maduro of arrest.

Machado had backed the candidacy of Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia after she herself was banned from running, and supporters say he won 67 per cent of the vote. He was not immediately seen on Saturday.

Backers cried out “Freedom!” as Machado’s truck passed by.

“We have never been so strong as today,” she told the crowd, adding that “the regime has never been weaker.”

Adrian Pacheco, a 26-year-old shopkeeper, told AFP, “Seeing her gives me hope, despite the threats. She is a light for Venezuela.”

But opposition supporters were fearful, with memories still fresh of a wave of repression under the Maduro government in 2017 that left some 100 people dead.

“We have dead, wounded, detainees, missing people… People know it. They are afraid,” said Katiusca Camargo, an activist in Caracas.

Maduro called on his supporters to turn out for “the mother of all marches” later in the afternoon. He accused the opposition of plotting attacks against security forces during their rallies.

Several thousand of his backers converged in the center city to march to the presidential palace in the name of “national peace.”

Venezuela’s CNE election authority, loyal to Maduro, on Friday proclaimed him the winner with 52 per cent of the vote to 43 per cent for Gonzalez Urrutia.

But that result has been rejected by countries including the United States, Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama and Uruguay.

The opposition has launched a website with copies of 84 per cent of ballots cast, showing an easy win for Gonzalez Urrutia. The government claims these are forged.

On Saturday, the leaders of EU states France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal and Spain noted their “strong concern” and called on Venezuela to “promptly publish all voting records to ensure full transparency and integrity of the electoral process.”

The 61-year-old Maduro has reacted fiercely to the international criticism, describing allegations of vote fraud as a “trap” orchestrated by Washington to justify “a coup.”

Maduro has led the oil-rich, cash-poor country since 2013, presiding over a GDP drop of 80 per cent that pushed more than seven million of once-wealthy Venezuela’s 30 million citizens to emigrate.

Experts blame economic mismanagement and US sanctions for the collapse.