MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuela's TSJ rules that Maduro won the July 28 elections

“We can conclude that the bulletins issued by the CNE are supported by the tally sheets issued by each of the voting machines,” Caryslia Rodríguez stressed

The Electoral Chamber of Venezuela's Supreme Court (TSJ) ruled Thursday that incumbent President Nicolás Maduro won the July 28 polls and therefore has been reelected for the 2025-2031 term, Chief Justice Caryslia Rodríguez announced.

“Based on the results obtained in the expertise process we can conclude that the bulletins issued by the CNE are supported by the tally sheets issued by each of the voting machines deployed in the electoral process. These tally sheets maintain full coincidence with the database of the National Totalization Centers,” she explained.

Therefore, ”this Chamber validates the results of the presidential election of July 28 issued by the National Electoral Council [(CNE)], whereby Nicolás Maduro Moros was elected as President of Venezuela for the constitutional period 2025-2031,″ the magistrate went on.

All the “electoral material” consigned by other political organizations will remain “in safekeeping,” the TSJ also ruled while instructing the CNE to publish the results.

Caryslia Rodríguez, a known fervent adherent to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) also agreed that the CNE had suffered “a massive cybernetic attack.” She also explained that the TSJ was competent to rule on this issue and therefore all chains of appeals have been exhausted “in a definitive manner.”

Meanwhile, opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia, whose Unitarian Democratic Platform (PUD) camp claimed had collected 67% of the vote, disregarded the TSJ's mandate to appear at various hearings, due to which the dossier was sent to Attorney General Tarek William Saab to conduct an investigation “to determine [his] responsibilities in the case in view of the anxiety caused in the population for the alleged commission of the crimes of usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobey the laws, computer crimes, [and]association to commit crimes and conspiracy.”

“By virtue of the allegedly false or forged documents uploaded in the web page www.resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com, as well as the massive cyber attack denounced against the Venezuelan electoral system, which could configure alleged unlawful conducts, common, electoral and constitutional crimes in contravention of the current legal system,” Justice Rodríguez also pointed out.

After the verdict, González Urrutia replied on X: “Gentlemen of the TSJ: No sentence will replace the popular sovereignty.” The world knows of the TSJ's bias and, therefore, “its inability to resolve the conflict,” he added. This “decision will only aggravate the crisis” because “Venezuelans are not willing to give up our freedom or our right to change in peace in order to live better.”

Meanwhile, Saab confirmed that 27 people had been killed in violent events since the CNE announced Maduro's win on July 28 but “no victims are attributable” to law enforcement forces. “Seventy percent of the victims were killed by thugs,” Saab underlined before foreign diplomats, despite allegations by human rights NGOs of violence in the crackdown by security forces and Chavista paramilitary gangs. Saab also insisted Venezuela was going through a “hybrid war,” which included “coup attempts, embryonic civil war and intensification of international sanctions to produce massive exoduses of people.”