Maduro submits election documents to TSJ — MercoPress

Maduro brings election documents to TSJ

Maduro insists all his hearings with judges should be public

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Friday submitted to the Supreme Court (TSJ) electoral records held by the party that supported his candidacy in the July 28 election, according to the Brazilian news agency Agencia Brasil. The TSJ launched an investigation at Maduro’s request after the opposition cried “fraud” and insisted that Edmundo González Urrutia was the winner.

“The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and the Simón Bolivarian Patriotic Party (a coalition of parties supporting Maduro’s government) have the experience, the mechanisms, the organization, the professional capacity and the expertise to conduct the electoral process and have all the documents that were delivered to the Electoral Tribunal (TSJ) today,” Maduro told reporters after consulting with the judges in Caracas.

Representatives of the 38 political parties participating in the presidential elections and nine of the ten competing candidates have attended the TSJ hearings, which were presided over by judges from the so-called electoral chamber of the court, since August 4. The only person who did not attend the hearings was González Urrutia, who claimed that the TSJ investigation usurped the competences of the National Electoral Council (CNE).

Furthermore, political party leaders supporting González Urrutia’s Unified Democratic Platform (PUD) did attend the TSJ but failed to submit the minutes, arguing that they were published on the internet.

Maduro questioned the move and insisted he had asked prosecutors and judges to “make my hearings public in their entirety.”

In Venezuela, when voting closes, ballots are printed at ballot boxes and copies are distributed to all party officials present. The CNE has not yet published the minutes of each voting station.

PSUV leader Diosdado Cabello argued that the election results in Venezuela were not announced. “Here, the results are announced. If I dispute a result, I will present my results to prove it,” he commented.

Previously, the CNE had been publishing data in the form of voting tables. The CNE’s website has been inaccessible since it announced Maduro’s victory, but it has not published detailed data from the voting tables or conducted any audits, sparking allegations of fraud.

González Urrutia’s camp published on the Internet what they said were voter rolls held by his party, which would prove his victory. However, the government insists that the records are fake and the prosecutor’s office has opened a criminal investigation against the person responsible for the webpage that hosted the documents.

In this case, the TSJ launched an investigation to expedite the process. As a result, the CNE handed over the alleged original minutes to the judiciary but did not disclose them publicly.