Venezuela Supreme Court backs Maduro

Venezuela’s Supreme Court on Thursday certified President Nicolás Maduro as the winner of July’s disputed election. The decision from Maduro’s hand-picked justices was widely expected, and their ruling cannot be appealed, a top lawmaker said. Despite the United Nations warning that the court was not impartial, the ruling may shift international support in favor of Maduro, The Wall Street Journal wrote: Friendly neighbors like Brazil and Mexico previously said they would wait for the courts to decide on the election.

And “the appetite for a renewed pressure campaign involving sanctions… is slim,” Latin American analyst Oliver Stuenkel argued, as previous US-imposed sanctions failed to topple Maduro and worsened the country’s economic and migrant crisis.