Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolas Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.
The ruling is the latest attempt by Mr Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third six-year term.
The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.
Its ruling, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response a request by Mr Maduro to review vote totals that he claimed — without evidence — was marred by a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia.
The main opposition coalition has accused Mr Maduro of trying to steal the vote.
Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show 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 make it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.
The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Centre who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility.
Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities did not release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.
Mr Gonzalez was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.
Numerous foreign governments, including the US as well as several leftist allies of Mr Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.
Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Mr Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification.
“Today, Venezuela’s TSJ has finally consolidated the fraud,” he said on his X account, referring to the initials of the high court.
“The Maduro regime obviously welcomes with enthusiasm its ruling… there is no doubt that we are facing a dictatorship that falsifies elections.”
