Maduro’s strategy to stay in power

Venezuela has been plunged into turmoil after the government-controlled electoral body announced disputed election results, handing President Nicolás Maduro a third consecutive term.

The opposition said the election results, which its candidate Edmundo González won by a wide margin, were fraudulent.

The National Electoral Council (CNE), which announced the disputed results, has so far failed to provide tallies from various polling stations that the opposition said proved Mr González was the winner.

As pressure mounts on the CNE to release the statistics, Mr Maduro has turned to Venezuela’s Supreme Court for help. The move sparked concerns. Here we explain why.

Venezuela has an electronic voting system. Voters press the button assigned to their preferred candidate on a voting machine.

After pressing the button, the machine will also print out a paper receipt. The voter places the receipt into the ballot box.

After polling stations close, vote counting begins.

Each voting machine prints a summary of all votes cast by voters using that particular machine.

In addition, paper receipts will be counted at each polling station to confirm that the machine’s printout is correct.

By law, the process is public and can be witnessed by anyone. There are also a number of accredited witnesses representing various parties.

Once the count chairperson and accredited witnesses are satisfied that the numbers match, they sign the count and send it electronically to the CNE.

Accredited witnesses receive a copy and printed statistics are shipped to the CNE by the military.

Three of the five members of Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) are staunch government allies. Its chairman, Ives Amoroso, has served as Mr. Maduro’s legal adviser.

Fearing that the CNE might tamper with the election results, the opposition asked thousands of Venezuelan citizens to go to polling stations to serve as witnesses during the vote counting process.

The CNE released the first partial results just after midnight on election night.

Reports said 80% of the votes had been counted, with President Maduro receiving 5.15 million votes and Mr. González 4.44 million.

CNE president Ives Amoroso said the figures meant Maduro had a “convincing and irreversible lead” with 51.2% of the vote, while the opposition trailed with 44.2%.

The opposition was quick to challenge the results.

Witnesses provided it with copies of vote tallies from polling stations across the country.

Hours after the election, opposition leader María Collina Machado announced that after seeing 40 percent of the votes counted, they could confirm that their candidate, not Mr. Maduro, was in the lead.

A few days after the election, the opposition’s share of the vote had risen to 84%.

The opposition said the tallies showed Mr González won with 67 per cent of the vote.

Opposition activists have shared the documents with international organizations and independent researchers and uploaded them to a website that Venezuelans can access by entering their ID numbers.

They also urged the CNE to make all vote counts public, arguing it would show that Maduro’s victory declared by electoral authorities on election night was fraudulent.

Latin American leaders, including left-wing leaders in Colombia and Brazil, have joined the United States, the European Union and independent election observers in increasingly vocal calls for the CNE to finally release the statistics.

On Wednesday, three days after the election, President Maduro said his coalition was “ready to announce 100 percent of the vote count in our hands.”

He made the announcement at the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), Venezuela’s highest court.

Earlier, he blamed the CNE’s delay in publishing the vote count on an “unprecedented cyber attack” that he claimed disrupted the transmission of results from polling stations.

But instead of making the statistics public, he took the unusual step of filing a “writ.” Protect“—This is a common legal step taken by citizens who believe their constitutional rights have been violated.

He asked the Supreme Court to review the vote to confirm the results provided by the National Electoral Commission, giving him another six years in power.

Mr Maduro’s statement may look like he is giving in to pressure to make the statistics public.

But by going to the Supreme Court, he found a way to divert attention from the CNE and delay the release of the statistical results in one fell swoop.

Now the ball has fallen in the court of the Supreme Court (TSJ), whose judges are overwhelmingly government loyalists.

Proceedings there may take place behind closed doors, in which case even if Maduro provides statistical results, only a judge can view them.

In the short term, this deflects pressure from the CNE and allows Mr Maduro to argue that he has complied with international demands to hand over statistics.

In the medium term, if the court rules in his favor, he will hope that this endorsement will bolster his claim that he is the winner of the election.

However, the move has been rejected by independent institutions, including the Carter Center, which was invited by the Maduro government to observe the election.

Jennie K. Lincoln, the Carter Center delegation leader, told The Associated Press that the TSJ is “another government agency appointed by the administration to verify government data on questionable election results.”

“This is not an independent assessment.”

This is not the first time Maduro’s election victory has been accused of fraud.

The 2018 election was widely seen as neither free nor fair, after opposition candidates were jailed, barred from running or forced into exile.

It’s not just the CNE’s 2024 election results that are being questioned.

The Carter Center, which has monitored more than 100 elections around the world, lists a long list of problems with the electoral process, including:

• Venezuelans abroad face excessive legal requirements to register to vote
• Harassment and intimidation of those who provide services and goods to major opposition activities
• Potential pressure on voters from ruling party checkpoints near polling stations

It concluded that the 2024 presidential election “cannot be considered democratic”.