Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) has deemed valid the results of the presidential elections released by the National Electoral Council (CNE) and which declared the current Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, the winner, despite suspicions of fraud raised by the opposition and by most of the international community.

The Electoral Chamber of the TSJ has certified ““unobjectionably” the CNE material and, therefore, considers Maduro as the elected president of Venezuela for the period 2025-2031, despite accusations from the opposition that have demanded the release of the minutes, since the ruling itself “urges” the Electoral Council to publish the “final” results.

The judges have concluded that there are no discrepancies between the data from the voting machines and the data provided by the CNE, which allows the results to be “validated” and opens a new chapter in a process that the opposition already considered biased from the start, given the control of Chavismo over the various powers.

The Supreme Court also ordered that the information gathered be transferred “urgently” to the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, in view of the possibility that crimes of usurpation of functions, falsification of public documents, incitement to disobedience or conspiracy may have been committed during the process.

The opposition countered the CNE’s lack of public data by publishing on the Internet some minutes that would prove the victory of its main candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, who assumed the leadership of the campaign in the face of the continued political disqualification of María Corina Machado, winner of the primaries.

Likewise, the sentence read by the president of the court, Caryslia Rodríguez, in the presence of ministers of the Government of Nicolás Maduro has pointed to possible cybercrimes, insisting that the CNE was the victim of a “massive” cyberattack during election day.

Rodríguez took the opportunity to summarise the process that has now led to this ruling, which included summons to all the candidates. González Urrutia did not attend the Supreme Court, according to the judge “in clear disrespect to the judicial authority”.

Rejection of the opposition

Venezuelan opposition leaders have rejected the ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) that certifies the victory of President Nicolás Maduro in the elections of July 28 and they have called to continue defending “popular sovereignty”, claiming that the true winner of that meeting was Edmundo González Urrutia.

“Sovereignty resides untransferably in the people,” González himself claimed on his account on the social network X, shortly after reading a ruling that validates the conclusions of the National Electoral Council (CNE), despite the fact that this body has not released the official minutes.