Caracas Venezuela — from Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro said he asked the country’s Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the presidential election after opposition leaders questioned his claim of victory, prompting swift condemnation from independent observers.
Maduro told reporters Wednesday that the ruling party is also ready to show all of the tally sheets from Sunday’s elections.
“I appear before justice,” he told reporters outside the Supreme Court headquarters in Caracas, adding that he is “willing to be summoned, interrogated, investigated.”
This is Maduro’s first concession to demands for greater transparency about the elections. However, the Supreme Court is closely aligned with his government; Federal officials nominate the court’s justices and they are ratified by the National Assembly, dominated by Maduro supporters.
The Carter Center criticized Maduro’s audit request, saying the court would not provide an independent review.
“There is another government institution designated by the government to verify the government figures for the election results in question,” said Jennie K. Lincoln, senior adviser for Latin America and the Caribbean and leader of the delegation that the government’s Carter Center sent to monitor the elections in Venezuela. “This is not an independent evaluation.”
The Atlanta-based group said late Tuesday that it was unable to verify the election results and blamed authorities for a “complete lack of transparency” in declaring Maduro the winner. Venezuelan electoral authorities allowed the group to send 17 experts to observe the elections.
Maduro’s main rival, Edmundo González, and opposition leader María Corina Machado, They say they got more than two-thirds of the counting records that each electronic voting machine printed after the polls closed. They said that the publication of the data on those counts would show that Maduro is lost the chose.
Maduro insisted to reporters that there had been a plot against his government and that the electoral system was hacked, but he did not provide details or present any evidence. He is expected to address domestic and foreign media on Wednesday afternoon in his first official news conference since the election.
Pressure against the president has been increasing since the elections. The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to publish any printed results from voting centers as it did in past elections.
Maduro’s close ally, Colombian President Gustavo Petro, joined other foreign leaders on Wednesday in urging him to release detailed vote counts. A day earlier, another of Maduro’s allies, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, along with US President Joe Biden called for the “immediate publication of complete, transparent and detailed voting data at the polling station level.”
Brazil’s presidential office declined to comment Wednesday on whether a Supreme Court audit would amount to an independent verification of election results, instead pointing to a Foreign Ministry statement released Monday. That statement said that the Brazilian government awaits “the publication by the National Electoral Council of the data broken down by polling station, an essential step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the electoral result.”
Lula said of Maduro on Tuesday that “the more transparency there is, the greater his chances of having peace to govern Venezuela.”
Machado said vote counts obtained by the opposition show that González received approximately 6.2 million votes compared to 2.7 million for Maduro. This differs widely from the electoral council’s report that Maduro received 5.1 million votes, compared to more than 4.4 million for González.
“The serious doubts that have arisen around the Venezuelan electoral process may lead its people to deep violent polarization with serious consequences of permanent division,” Petro said Wednesday in a post on the social media site X.
“I invite the Venezuelan government to allow the elections to end in peace, allowing a transparent count, with the counting of votes, and with the supervision of all the political forces of your country and professional international supervision,” he added.
Petro proposed that the Maduro government and the opposition reach an agreement “that allows maximum respect for the (political) force that lost the elections.” The agreement, he said, could be presented to the United Nations Security Council.
Venezuela has the The largest proven crude oil reserves in the world. and once boasted the most advanced economy in Latin America, but went into free fall after Maduro took command in 2013. Falling oil prices, widespread shortages and hyperinflation that exceeded 130,000% led to social unrest and mass emigration.
More than 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country. since 2014, the largest exodus in the recent history of Latin America. Many have settled in Colombia.
Speaking to reporters in Vietnam on Wednesday, the European Union’s foreign affairs chief said the bloc will not recognize Maduro’s claim of election victory without independent verification of voting records.
“They should have been facilitated immediately, as in any democratic electoral process,” said Josep Borrell.
Within hours of the electoral council announcing on Monday that Maduro had won, thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital, Caracas, and other cities. The protests, which continued into Tuesday, turned violent at times and law enforcement responded with tear gas and birdshot.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab told reporters on Tuesday that more than 700 protesters were arrested. in nationwide demonstrations on Monday and that officer was killed.
The Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal said 11 people, including two minors, had died in election-related unrest.
The Organization of American States will meet on Wednesday to discuss Venezuela’s election.
Maduro’s closest allies in the ruling party quickly came to his defense. The president of the National Assembly, Jorge Rodríguez, his main negotiator in talks with the United States and the opposition, insisted that Maduro was the undisputed winner and called his opponents violent fascists. He requested the arrest of Machado and González.
In a Spanish-language post on X, the EU’s Borrell urged Venezuelan authorities to “end arrests, repression and violent rhetoric against members of the opposition.”
Meanwhile, Machado and González urged their followers to remain calm.
“I ask Venezuelans to remain in peace, demanding that the result be respected and the minutes be published,” González said in X. “This victory, which belongs to everyone, will unite and reconcile us as a nation.”
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Associated Press journalist Ella Joyner in Brussels and Eleonore Hughes in Rio de Janeiro contributed.
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