Maduro heads to Supreme Court hoping to cement disputed vote win

President Nicolas Maduro is set to appear before Venezuela's Supreme Court on Friday, as he asks the top judicial body to affirm his disputed reelection.

The court appearance comes as the country's main opposition leader continues to challenge the July 28 vote, telling AFP that she would offer Maduro "guarantees and incentives" for a "negotiated transition" of power which sees him leave office.

The nation has been in political crisis since election authorities declared Maduro the winner of last month's poll, a decision questioned both domestically and abroad.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to release detailed results from the vote, while the opposition has released copies of 84 percent 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 Maduro -- has summoned all presidential candidates before it, though some of the opposition have refused to attend.

Speaking to AFP via voice notes sent while in hiding amid fears for her safety, opposition leader Maria Corina Machado also called for greater support from the international community.

Protests sparked last week by the declaration of Maduro's victory left at least 24 people dead, according to rights groups, with thousands also arrested.

"We want peace, tranquility, that is why I filed this contentious appeal before the Supreme Court," Maduro said Thursday at a rally in Caracas.

"There have been two days of hearings, all candidates and all parties were summoned... It's my turn."

- 'Completely' lost legitimacy -

Machado meanwhile told AFP that 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," the 56-year-old said.

She added that Maduro has "completely, absolutely, lost legitimacy" and that "all Venezuelans and the world know that Edmundo Gonzalez won in a landslide."

Critics say the court, and the electoral authority, are consistently loyal to Maduro, who wants the body to simply "validate" his victory.

Fellow left-wing governments from Brazil, Colombia and Mexico praised the verification process undertaken by the court but said that they "start from the premise that the CNE is the organ legally mandated to transparently disclose the electoral results."

The CNE ratified Maduro's victory with 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 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.