Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles challenged Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s narrow election victory before the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice on Thursday, prolonging what appears to be a futile effort to overturn the result of last month’s vote.
Capriles refused to accept the results of the April 14 vote for a successor to former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, and called on supporters to take the streets. That led to unruly demonstrations in which the government says nine people died.
Few expect Capriles to win a favorable ruling from the court, which the opposition says is controlled by the ruling Socialist Party.
Photo: Reuters
He may also go to international tribunals, though most countries have recognized Maduro’s win.
“This appeal seeks to annul the elections and request new presidential elections in Venezuela,” said Gerardo Fernandez, a lawyer representing the opposition, who are intent on at least discrediting Maduro even if they cannot overrule the result.
Fernandez said the appeal includes complaints relating to incidents prior to the election. The opposition accuses Maduro of using state resources and government media for his campaign.
Capriles also alleges there were thousands of irregularities on voting day, ranging from intimidation of poll station volunteers to illegal campaigning by government supporters.
“This is not over. No one here can get tired or throw in the towel,” Capriles told a news conference, adding that his team had found names of 200,000 dead people on the electoral register.
As on previous occasions, Capriles’ news conference was interrupted on television after a few minutes by a government cadena broadcast that all local channels are obliged to show live.
Opposition supporters responded by banging pots and pans in some neighborhoods in a traditional form of protest in Venezuela and some other Latin American countries.
Maduro pillories Capriles daily as a sore loser and “bourgeois cry-baby.” He accuses Capriles of fomenting post-vote violence, including killings of government supporters and attacks on government-run clinics.
Residents of one Caracas community affected by post-election violence told reporters that two people were shot and killed by opposition sympathizers following a protest.
The government also attributed a third fatality in the La Limonera community to opposition violence, but locals said that man was a victim of common crime.
The election was triggered by the March 5 death of Chavez, whose charismatic leadership and oil-financed social largesse made him a hero to the poor but a pariah to critics who called him a dictator.
Though he was anointed as Chavez’s successor, Maduro beat Capriles by only 1.5 percentage points in contrast to Chavez’s 11 point victory over the same rival last year.
The vote dispute led to a punch-up in the Venezuelan Congress on Tuesday that put several opposition deputies in hospital. Video footage showed government allies repeatedly punching a deputy in the face, leaving him bloodied and bruised.
The deputies had raised a banner saying “Coup in Parliament” after the pro-government leadership of the legislature prevented them from speaking during the session unless they explicitly recognized Maduro as president.
The government responded with a broadcast, set to eerie, suspense-thriller music, showing opposition deputies waving arms and one throwing a chair.
Julio Borges, the opposition deputy who bore the most notable wounds from the fracas, called Maduro a “big liar” in a Twitter post. “I challenge you to show the Assembly’s closed circuit video footage without editing anything,” he said.
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