Caracas, August 11 (RHC)-- Venezuela's Electoral Chamber, in charge of reviewing the scrutiny of the presidential elections of July 28th, announced to the media that the review of the documentation presented by the CNE and the former candidates has entered its final phase.

According to the president of the highest court of Venezuela, Caryslia Rodríguez Rodríguez, after the hearings with the ten former presidential candidates and the 38 organizations with political purposes that participated in the elections, her court is preparing to carry out the appraisal of all the electoral material submitted in physical and digital form.

In turn, the Court released a document highlighting that the investigation is being carried out by highly qualified personnel, using the highest technical standards, to ensure that conflicts are resolved in a sovereign and fair manner.

The investigation is being carried out on all electoral material of probative value submitted by the Electoral Power, and the 33 of the 38 political organizations summoned to the hearings on August 7, 8 and 9.

Among the documentation that the court must verify is all the information and evidence provided by the National Electoral Council on August 5, in addition to the minutes and testimonies offered by the different forces and contenders involved in the elections.

The presiding judge of the TSJ stressed that the expert opinion is taking place in order to produce the final sentence that responds to the contentious appeal filed by the re-elected president, Nicolás Maduro Moros, with the purpose of protecting the peace and stability of Venezuela.

Likewise, everything related to the massive cyber attack that affected the Venezuelan electoral system on July 28, the day of the presidential elections, will be reviewed.

The Electoral Chamber is part of the Supreme Judicial Tribunal of Venezuela and is therefore the highest instance, a situation for which the sentence will be of an unappealable nature and of obligatory compliance.

One former candidate in contempt of court 

In her assessment to the media, the president of the Electoral Chamber of the TSJ also noted that the former candidate Edmundo González Urrutia is in contempt of the highest judicial body.

She stressed that the parties that supported him did not present appeals that referred to an act of fraud or any other information that validated the alleged triumph of this former candidate.

Of the ten former candidates summoned by the Electoral Court, all attended except Gonzáz Urrutia, with Antonio Ecarri, José Brito, Enrique Márquez, Luis Eduardo Martínez, Daniel Ceballos, Javier Bertucci, Claudio Fermín, Benjamín Rausseo and Nicolás Maduro leaving their testimony.

In turn, the judicial authority clarified that the candidates of the former candidate González Urrutia, members of the Democratic Unitarian Platform Alliance (PUD), also did not submit electoral material and argued that they did not have any type of documentation related to the process, such as scrutiny records and lists of witnesses.

And he stressed that in its appearance, the CNE fully complied with "the request made by the Electoral Chamber, by submitting opportunely and in a timely manner, all the documents related to the process."

Attacks on legality

In another part of his statement, Rodríguez Rodríguez stressed that the PUD indicated that it did not participate in the transfer and safekeeping of electoral material, while pointing out that the SUMATE organization was part of the technical advisory team of the Alliance.

SÚMATE is a Venezuelan organization historically linked to the United States Department of State and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which has been accused of operating as a CIA franchise under the guise of civil society and which has María Corina Machado as one of the most prominent figures of the organization.

Founded in the context of the attempted coup d'état in 2002 against President Hugo Chávez, SÚMATE has received significant funding from the NED and other US entities to promote political agendas that challenge the Venezuelan government.

Recently, the Attorney General's Office of the Caribbean country linked the attempt to alter the results of the CNE with the holding of the primaries of a sector of the opposition in October 2023.

According to the investigative entity, these elections were organized by SUMATE without verification mechanisms or auditing. In addition, the Prosecutor's Office points out that although no more than 350 thousand people participated, the NGO indicated that the participation had been 2.4 million people.

Regarding the opposition minutes

The president of the Electoral Chamber also referred to the alleged minutes of scrutiny on the website www.resultadospresidencialesvenezuela2024.com.

Regarding this matter, the magistrate pointed out that the members of the opposition coalition consulted told the court that they did not know who published them.

This action is currently being investigated by the Public Prosecutor's Office to determine the responsibilities related to the alleged commission of the crimes: usurpation of functions, forgery of public documents, instigation to disobedience of the laws, computer crimes, criminal association and conspiracy, due to the anxiety caused in the population.

The minutes presented on that web platform by the Venezuelan far-right opposition, headed by Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, have been denounced as false due to several irregularities pointed out by Jorge Rodríguez, President of the National Assembly.

These irregularities include the lack of signatures of table members, witnesses and machine operators in the minutes, which invalidates their authenticity.

In addition, the minutes presented only cover 31% of the total, which indicates a partial and manipulated representation. Rodríguez also pointed out that the results presented in these minutes are mathematically impossible, showing identical percentages in all regions of the country, which contradicts historical and demographic trends.

Finally, the web platform used to publish these minutes was built on an outdated or false Permanent Electoral Registry (REP), which reinforces the accusation that it is a structure fabricated to delegitimize the elections and illegally proclaim González as "president-elect."

The contentious appeal

On July 31, the re-elected candidate Nicolás Maduro presented a contentious appeal to the Court, that is, a request to investigate the actions of the Public Administration, so that everything that occurred during the electoral day of July 28 is investigated and made transparent.

According to the National Electoral Council, after the elections, the transmission of the results was cybernetically obstructed with the alleged objective of generating a scenario of uncertainty through which the electoral entity would be delegitimized.

The Venezuelan justice system will have to determine whether this event, together with the publication of more than 9,000 supposed electoral records with numerous inconsistencies on an unofficial website, was part of a strategy by the Venezuelan far right and the United States, as the Executive claims.

The Bolivarian Government's complaint states that through this maneuver, the opposition leaders presented Edmundo González Urrutia as the winning candidate with the aim of generating a destabilizing process leading to a coup d'état.