The Supreme Court of Venezuela has ruled in favor of President Nicolas Maduro’s claim that he won the recent presidential election, despite opposition claims that he lost by a landslide. The ruling comes as a blow to opposition protests and international criticism that have followed the disputed election. The court’s decision was made in response to a request by Mr. Maduro to review the vote totals, which he claimed were marred by a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia. However, there is no evidence to support this claim.
The main opposition coalition has accused Mr. Maduro of trying to steal the vote, citing evidence they collected from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide. According to these totals, opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez won by a more than 2-to-1 margin. The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy to verify the results, and experts from the United Nations and the Carter Centre have questioned the credibility of the results announced by authorities.
President Nicolas Maduro (Image via Getty)
Despite the controversy surrounding the election, authorities have refused to release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide. This lack of transparency is unusual for Venezuela, where the government has typically released detailed voting results in the past. Mr. Gonzalez, the opposition candidate, was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, which the justices accused him of trying to spread panic.
The international community has strongly criticized the election, with numerous foreign governments calling on authorities to release the full breakdown of results. Chilean President Gabriel Boric, a vocal critic of Mr. Maduro’s election gambit, accused the Venezuelan government of falsifying elections. “Today, Venezuela’s TSJ has finally consolidated the fraud,” he said. “The Maduro regime obviously welcomes with enthusiasm its ruling… there is no doubt that we are facing a dictatorship that falsifies elections.”
