Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has until Monday to present the minutes of the disputed re-election of President Nicolas Maduro to the Supreme Court, which is under international pressure and is seeking to have his victory “validated” by the highest judicial authority.
The opposition and part of the international community have been demanding these documents, emanating from each polling station in the July 28 election, since the CNE proclaimed Mr. Maduro’s victory.
The unrest that followed the proclamation left 11 civilians dead, according to human rights groups. Maduro announced the deaths of two members of the National Guard and the arrests of more than 2,000 people.
The Supreme Court on Friday gave the CNE three days to present the “minutes of the count of the polling stations at the national level” and “the minutes of the final count.”
However, no major announcements are expected: the CNE, like the Supreme Court (TSJ), are considered to be at the beck and call of the government by the opposition and by most observers.
With this procedure, Mr. Maduro “implicitly admits that no one believes in the proclamation (of the CNE), to the point that he asks for another power to intervene, such as a registry or a notary, to certify his victory,” emphasizes Perkins Rocha, an opposition lawyer. “Mr. Maduro knows that he can count on a TSJ on his knees before him.”
The CNE ratified Mr Maduro’s victory on Friday with 52% of the vote against 43% for Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, who replaced at short notice the leader of the opposition Maria Corina Machado, who was declared ineligible.
Claiming to be the victim of computer hacking, the electoral authority has still not given details of the voting office by office.
The opposition believes that this is a maneuver to avoid revealing the real results, and has published on a website the minutes corresponding to each office. According to these documents, the validity of which is rejected by Mr. Maduro, Mr. Gonzalez Urrutia won the election with 67% of the votes.
French President Emmanuel Macron and his Brazilian counterpart Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said Monday they support “the aspiration of the Venezuelan people for a transparent election.”
On Sunday, the European Union said it could not recognise the official results: “Despite its commitment to do so, the CNE has still not published the official minutes of the polling stations. In the absence of evidence to support them, the results published on 2 August by the National Electoral Council cannot be recognised.”
Demonstration of support
Unlike the United States and several other countries, however, the EU has refrained from formally recognising Mr Gonzalez Urrutia’s victory.
The United States, which maintains its sanctions against Venezuela, has reported “overwhelming evidence” of a victory by the opposition candidate. Several countries have even recognized him as “president-elect.”
Countries like Brazil, Colombia and Mexico have simply called for a resolution to the crisis.
For the moment, Mr Maduro, supported by his traditional allies, Russia and China, is pretending to be insensitive to international pressure, saying he is the victim of an attempted American “imperialist coup d’état”.
On Monday – as has been the case almost every day since the election – supporters of the Venezuelan leader will march through Caracas “for peace and in defense of the victory of President Nicolas Maduro.” This time it will be a march of the “socialist youth.”
Mr Maduro has maintained a tough stance against the protests, calling the demonstrators criminals. He praised the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB), a military force responsible for public order, on Sunday for its “exemplary conduct” during the protests. He also assured Saturday that the police and military deployment would continue in the country to “protect the people”.
The opposition is referring to the “persecution and repression that has been cruelly deployed against innocent people in recent hours,” according to a message posted Sunday on the social network X by Maria Corina Machado, who says she is in hiding and “fears for her life.” “We are not going to leave the streets,” she told her supporters Saturday.
After a week of great tension with many businesses closed, Caracas seemed to be returning to normal life on Monday.