(Caracas) The Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela on Friday declared “inadmissible” an appeal filed by former presidential candidate Enrique Marquez requesting the annulment of a decision issued by the same Court validating the controversial re-election of President Nicolas Maduro.
The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), accused of being at the orders of those in power, judges “inadmissible the request for constitutional revision of the sentence of August 22, 2024, issued by the Electoral Chamber” of the same TSJ.
Mr. Maduro himself had filed an appeal before the TSJ to validate the proclamation of his victory by the National Electoral Council (CNE), also considered very favorable to the government.
Former member of the CNE on behalf of the opposition, Mr. Marquez, who was one of the ten candidates for the presidential election of July 28, had filed an appeal on September 26 before the Constitutional Chamber of the TSJ considering that the decision ratifying the victory of Mr Maduro was tainted with “unconstitutional vices” and constituted a “violation of popular sovereignty”.
In its judgment, the TSJ ensures that the examination of the experts “proved the incontestable integrity of the results announced by the National Electoral Council, which showed that the candidate elected for the 2025-2031 presidential term was Nicolas Maduro”.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) proclaimed Mr. Maduro the winner of the vote with 52% of the votes, but did not make public the minutes of the polling stations, claiming to be the victim of computer hacking.
The opposition, which cries fraud, assures on the basis of the minutes provided by its scrutineers that its candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia, now a refugee in Spain, obtained more than 60% of the votes.
After the announcement of Nicolas Maduro’s re-election, spontaneous demonstrations left 27 dead and 192 injured. Some 2,400 people were arrested, according to official sources.