President Nicolas Maduro on Friday ruled out negotiating with opposition leader Maria Corina Machado after he appeared before Venezuela’s Supreme Court, asking the country’s top judicial body to ratify his disputed reelection.
He was responding to Ms. Machado’s offer of “guarantees and incentives” for a “negotiated transition” of power that would see him leave office, in an interview with AFP as she continues to challenge the July 28 vote.
The South American nation has been in political crisis since election authorities declared Mr. Maduro the winner of last month’s poll, a decision questioned both at home and abroad.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to release detailed results from the vote, while the opposition has released copies of 84% of ballots cast, showing an easy win for their candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia. The government says those results are forged.
The Supreme Court — widely seen as aligned with Mr. Maduro — summoned all presidential candidates before it, though Gonzalez Urrutia refused to attend.
Mr. Maduro did so on Friday, after which he directed a warning to Ms. Machado. “The only person in this country who needs to negotiate with Machado is the public prosecutor. She should surrender to the courts and answer for the crimes she has committed” in contesting the election result,” he said after his hearing.
She is currently in hiding amid fears for her safety.
The disputed election sparked protests that have left at least 24 people dead, according to rights groups, and more than 2,000 arrested.
‘Completely’ lost legitimacy
Ms. Machado called for greater support from the international community. Speaking to AFP via voice notes, she said the opposition was “determined to move forward in a negotiation.”
“It will be a complex, delicate transition process, in which we are going to unite the whole nation,” said the 56-year-old Ms. Machado, who was barred from running herself against Mr. Maduro.
She added that Mr. Maduro has “completely, absolutely, lost legitimacy” and that “all Venezuelans and the world know that Edmundo Gonzalez won in a landslide.”
Lawmaker Diosdado Cabello, a powerful Maduro ally, dismissed Machado’s offer. “She is not in a position to negotiate anything,” he told reporters as he arrived at the supreme court, shortly before Maduro. “Offering conditions, to whom? Here the CNE, which is the governing body, gave a result: Nicolas Maduro won.”
Giulio Cellini, a director at the political consultancy group LOG Consultancy, said the whole process was an “ambush” of Gonzalez Urrutia, who is also in hiding, since both the high court and election authority are “controlled by Maduro.”
“What the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela says will be the law of the republic, it will be a holy sentence,” Mr. Maduro said ominously after his hearing.
He indicated, however, his willingness to call for “dialogue” with the country’s 38 parties, including the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) opposition coalition that supported Gonzalez Urrutia.
Fellow left-wing governments from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico noted the verification process undertaken by the court but asked that the CNE “transparently disclose the electoral results.”
Maduro said he was available “24 hours a day, every day” to talk with the leaders of the three countries, although a call between the foursome had been cancelled due to what he said was “scheduling problems.”
The CNE ratified Maduro’s victory, saying he had earned 52 percent of votes. In addition to not publishing detailed results, it has also claimed to have been hacked.
Jennie Lincoln, head of the Carter Center delegation that was invited to monitor the Venezuelan election, told AFP that it had “no evidence” of a cyberattack.
Furthering his post-election crackdown on Thursday, Maduro suspended access to the social media site X as he faced continued international pressure.
The president announced his government was blocking the social media platform formerly known as Twitter for 10 days, while accusing the site’s owner Elon Musk of “inciting hate and fascism” in Venezuela.
Maduro and Musk have been locked in a war of words via X.
Maduro has overseen a national collapse, including an 80 percent drop in the once-wealthy oil-rich country’s GDP, amid domestic economic mismanagement and international sanctions.
According to the United Nations, more than seven million Venezuelans have fled the country of 30 million since Maduro took over in 2013, mostly to other Latin American countries and the United States.
