Venezuela’s Supreme Court asks CNE to publish protocol of July 28 presidential election

Venezuela’s Supreme Court (STJ) has called on the National Electoral Council (CNE) to publish the minutes of the last presidential election, in which Nicolás Maduro was re-elected but whose results are being contested by the opposition.

“The Chamber asks CNE to transmit within three days of the order [dias úteis judiciais] (…) documents related to the process of the presidential elections of 28 July 2024,” explains sentence 026 in case STJ 2024-0000034.

The decision of the electoral commission, one of the six rooms that make up the STJ as a whole, was published on the social network “X”, and among the documents requested were the protocol of the national vote count, the final overall figures, the court decision and the proclamation.

“Since it is a well-known, well-known and well-known fact that the reported cyberattack on the CNE computer system prevented the timely transmission of the election results, we also request (…) all evidence related to this event,” he explains. For several days now, it has been impossible to access the websites of the Supreme Court and the National Electoral Council of Venezuela.

Last Thursday, August 1, the STJ accepted President Nicolás Maduro’s request to confirm the results of the last presidential elections, in which he was re-elected for a new six-year term (2025-2031).

On Friday, nine of the ten candidates in the elections appointed by the STJ – Nicolás Maduro, Luis Martínez, Daniel Ceballos, Antonio Ecurri, Benjamín Rausseo, Enrique Márquez, José Brito, Javier Bertucci and Claudio Fermín – appeared before the body, some of them speaking to journalists who had not read the contents of the Head of State’s address.

One of those summoned, the leading opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, did not appear before the STJ, prompting the Venezuelan president to warn that there would be “inevitable consequences.”

Without disclosing the content of the resource, Maduro said the government and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela were ready to publish all the election protocols, and accused the domestic opposition of trying, with the help of opponents abroad, to “carry out a coup d’état using the electoral process.”

Maduro also asked for the election results to be confirmed by “expert opinions of the highest technical level,” and explained that he was ready to be summoned, questioned, investigated, and brought to justice. According to CNE, Maduro was re-elected with 6,408,844 votes, 51.95% of the total, while the main opposition candidate, González Urrutia, came in second with 5,326,104 votes, 43.18%.

In the second bulletin of the electoral process, the CNE reports that 12,335,884 valid votes were cast in the presidential elections of July 28. According to the CNE, candidate Luis Martinez received 152,360 votes (1.24%), while all others received less than 1%.

The electoral council claimed it had been hacked, but that did not stop it from crediting Maduro with an “irreversible victory” in its first official bulletin.

Venezuela’s opposition has claimed victory in the presidential election, winning 70% of the vote for González Urrutia, although opposition leader María Corina Machado has refused to recognize the official results, citing a protocol drawn up at the inauguration of the opposition coalition.

The Carter Center (CC), one of the organizations invited by the Venezuelan government to monitor the presidential election, said on Tuesday it had been unable to verify the results, accusing authorities of a “total lack of transparency” in declaring Maduro the winner.

“The presidential elections in Venezuela did not meet international parameters and standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic,” the center said in a statement on its website. Several countries, including Portugal, have asked for the election protocols to be published.