President Nicolas Maduro asked Venezuela's Supreme Court on Wednesday to audit the presidential election after opposition leaders disputed his claim of victory. This drew criticism from foreign observers who said the court was too close to the government to present an independent review, quoted by News.bg.
Maduro told reporters that the ruling party is also ready to show all the records of Sunday's election.
"I am facing justice," he said outside the headquarters of the Supreme Tribunal of Justice in the capital Caracas, adding that he was "ready to be summoned, questioned, investigated.
This is Maduro's first concession to demands for more transparency in elections. However, the court is closely related to his government; The court's judges are nominated by federal officials and ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathizers.
The Carter Center, which sent a delegation to Venezuela to monitor the election, criticized Maduro's audit request, saying the court would not provide an independent review.
"You have another government institution that is appointed by the government to check the government numbers for the election results that are in question," said Jenny K. Lincoln, who led the delegation. "This is not an independent assessment."
The Atlanta-based group said Tuesday night it was unable to verify the announced results and criticized what it called a "total lack of transparency" when Maduro was declared the winner. Venezuela's electoral authorities authorized the Carter Center to send 17 observers.
Maduro's main challenger, Edmundo Gonzalez, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado say they received more than two-thirds of the votes that each electronic voting machine printed after the polls closed. They said the publication of these results would prove that Maduro had lost.
Maduro insisted to reporters that there was a conspiracy against his government and that the electoral system had been hacked. Asked later during a press conference why electoral authorities had not released detailed data on the vote count, Maduro said the National Electoral Council had been compromised by cyberattacks.
"Engineers are struggling right now," to resolve these attacks, he said, without elaborating.
The government has released several videos that the president says show people attacking and setting fire to some polling stations.
Attorney General Tarek William Saab said more than 1,000 people linked to some of these attacks had been arrested.
Pressure on the president is increasing after the election. The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has not yet released results from voting machines, as it has done in previous elections.
Colombian President Gustavo Petro, a close ally of Maduro, joined other foreign leaders on Wednesday in calling on him to release detailed data on the vote count.
"The serious doubts that have arisen about the Venezuelan electoral process could lead the people to a deep violent polarization with serious consequences of permanent division," said Petro on the social platform X.
"I call on the Venezuelan government to allow the elections to end peacefully, allowing for a transparent vote count, with the monitoring of all political forces in the country and professional international monitoring," 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 election". The agreement, he said, could be presented to the UN Security Council.
His comments came a day after another ally, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, along with US President Joe Biden, called for the "immediate release of full, transparent and detailed voting data at the polling station level".
Brazil's presidential office declined to comment Wednesday on whether an oversight by the Supreme Court of Justice would amount to an independent review. Instead, he pointed to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Monday, which said the government looked forward to "the publication by the National Electoral Council of data disaggregated by polling station, an indispensable step for the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the election result.
Lula said of Maduro on Tuesday that "the more transparency he has, the better chance he has of having peace to rule Venezuela.
The Organization of American States met in an emergency session on Wednesday, but members failed to reach consensus on a resolution to pressure Venezuelan authorities "immediately" publish the detailed results and verify them in the presence of international observers. Seventeen nations voted in favor of the resolution, one short of the required threshold for adoption. Eleven abstained and five were absent.