Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez must face an Aug. 15 recall vote, elections officials said -- one that could remove a leftist government that is hostile to the US, Venezuela's biggest customer for crude oil.
Francisco Carrasquero, president of Venezuela's elections council, announced late on Tuesday that Chavez's opposition had gathered 2.54 million signatures to demand the recall, surpassing the 2.43 million -- 20 percent of the electorate -- required by the Constitution.
Chavez, a virulent critic of US economic and foreign policies, claims his government has broken with Venezuela's corrupt past and serves the interests of the nation's vast poor majority.
To recall Chavez, Venezuela's opposition needs to win more than the 3.7 million votes he received during his 2000 election to a six-year term.
Critics accuse Chavez of steering Venezuela -- which straddles the Western hemisphere's largest oil reserves -- toward a dictatorship akin to that of his friend and mentor, Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Chavez has accused Washington of supporting opposition efforts to overthrow him. The Bush administration has denied the allegations.
Washington isn't happy that thousands of Cuban advisers are in Venezuela and that Chavez reportedly is shipping up to 100,000 barrels of cheap oil per day to Cuba.
The Organization of American States, the US-based Carter Center and a "Group of Friends" that includes the US have congratulated Chavez for his acceptance of the recall vote.
Chavez has embarked on a campaign to smash his opponents in what he calls "a decisive battle" for the future of the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.
"Oil is not only for a minority, so that a minority can get rich," Chavez told a large crowd of supporters in rural Trujillo state on Tuesday.
The elections council predicted last week that Chavez would face a recall. Chavez immediately took up the challenge, calling it an opportunity to purge an opposition that sponsored a brief and bloody 2002 coup and last year's general strike.
Opposition leader Felipe Mujica told Union Radio that the elections council violated an understanding between the government and the opposition that the recall would be held on Aug. 8.
But he insisted: "We'll have millions of votes on the 15th to recall the president."
While officials initially indicated the vote would be held on Aug. 8, Chavez's government wanted it to take place on Aug. 15, saying the extra time is needed to install a new automated voting system.
The referendum date is key.
Should Chavez lose a recall before Aug. 19 -- the completion of the fourth year of his six-year term -- presidential elections would be held within a month.
After Aug. 19, however, Chavez's vice president and loyal supporter, Jose Vicente Rangel, would serve out the rest of Chavez's term. Opponents fear Chavez would simply rule behind the scenes.
Ezequiel Zamora, the elections council vice president, said the council voted to use automated voting machines for the referendum. He said the results, whenever they are released, would be considered as taking effect before Aug. 19.
An automated vote would deter opposition fraud, the government argues. Venezuela's opposition fears glitches in the untested system could produce a quagmire favoring Chavez.
Showcasing phallus-shaped portable shrines and pink penis candies, Japan’s annual fertility festival yesterday teemed with tourists, couples and families elated by its open display of sex. The spring Kanamara Matsuri near Tokyo features colorfully dressed worshipers carrying a trio of giant phallic-shaped objects as they parade through the street with glee. The festival, as legend has it, honors a local blacksmith in the Edo Period (1603-1868) who forged an iron dildo to break the teeth of a sharp-toothed demon inhabiting a woman’s vagina that had been castrating young men on their wedding nights. A 1m black steel phallus sits in the courtyard of
HIGH HOPES: The power source is expected to have a future, as it is not dependent on the weather or light, and could be useful for places with large desalination facilities A Japanese water plant is harnessing the natural process of osmosis to generate renewable energy that could one day become a common power source. The possibility of generating power from osmosis — when water molecules pass from a less salty solution to a more salty one — has long been known. However, actually generating energy from that has proved more complicated, in part due the difficulty of designing the membrane through which the molecules pass. Engineers in Fukuoka, Japan, and their private partners think they might have cracked it, and have opened what is only the world’s second osmotic power plant. It generates
JAN. 1 CLAUSE: As military service is voluntary, applications for permission to stay abroad for over three months for men up to age 45 must, in principle, be granted A little-noticed clause in sweeping changes to Germany’s military service policy has triggered an uproar after it emerged that the law requires men aged up to 45 to get permission from the armed forces before any significant stay abroad, even in peacetime. The legislation, which went into effect on Jan. 1 aims to bolster the military and demands all 18-year-old men fill out a questionnaire to gauge their suitability to serve in the armed forces, but stops short of conscription. If the “modernized” model fails to pull in enough recruits, parliament will be compelled to discuss the reintroduction of compulsory service, German
Hundreds of Filipinos and tourists flocked to a sun-bleached field north of Manila yesterday, on Good Friday, to witness one of the country’s most blood-soaked displays of religious fervor, undeterred by rising fuel prices. Scores of bare-chested flagellants with covered faces walked barefoot through the dusty streets of Pampanga Province’s San Fernando as they flogged their backs with bamboo whips in the scorching heat. Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalists said they saw devotees deliberately puncturing their skin with glass shards attached to a small wooden paddle to ensure their bleeding during the ritual, a way to atone for sins and seek miracles from
RSS