https://www.newsroompanama.com/news/maduro-says-he-is-ready-to-release-venezuela-vote-tallies

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has promised to release all the vote tallies from the disputed weekend election, as international pressure mounts on the South American leader to be “transparent” with the vote results.  Maduro told reporters on Wednesday that the ruling party was ready to show the totality of the electoral tally sheets, a top demand of opposition politicians who have disputed Maduro’s claim to have won Sunday’s vote.  Maduro also said he asked the country’s Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the election.   Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro, who has worked to improve Colombia-Venezuela ties since taking office in 2022, said the Venezuelan government should “allow the elections to end in peace, allowing a transparent vote count … and professional international supervision”.  Such a process would appease protesters “and stop the violence that leads to death”.  He also said Maduro holds a “great responsibility” to allow the Venezuelan people to return to tranquility.

The Venezuelan opposition has claimed that the official election results were fraudulent, saying it has evidence that Gonzalez trounced Maduro 70% to 30%. “We Venezuelans want peace and respect for the popular will,” Gonzalez said on Tuesday as thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets of the capital Caracas and other parts of the country to protest the results.  The protesters, many of whom chanted anti-Maduro slogans, were met with tear gas and rubber bullets fired by police.  At least 11 people have been killed in incidents related to the election count or the protests.  Maduro struck a defiant tone, saying that Venezuela was the target of an attempted “coup d’etat” of a “fascist and counter-revolutionary” nature.  His government has called the protesters violent agitators and Maduro directly blamed Gonzalez “for everything that is happening in Venezuela”, including “criminal violence … the wounded, the dead, the destruction”.

Opposition leaders say they have access to around 90 percent of vote tallies – which by law are supposed to be given to witnesses at vote counts – and the printouts of those tallies show Gonzalez won more than twice as many votes as Maduro.  Given that the government had not yet shared the tallies, it “seems to be taking the worst path for them and for the country”.   Earlier on Wednesday, the foreign ministers of Group of Seven (G7) countries urged the Venezuelan authorities to publish “detailed electoral results in full transparency”.  “And we ask electoral representatives to immediately share all information with the opposition and independent observers,” they said in a statement.  The US-based Carter Center, which sent electoral observers to Venezuela for the vote, said late on Tuesday that the election “did not meet international standards of electoral integrity and cannot be considered democratic”.  It was a “clear bias” on the part of the CNE in favor of Maduro.  The Carter Center observer teams noted the desire of the Venezuelan people to participate in a democratic election process, as demonstrated through their active participation as polling staff, party witnesses, and citizen observers”.  “However, their efforts were undermined by the CNE’s complete lack of transparency in announcing the results.”