Tens of thousands of opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez marched through Caracas on Saturday to press election officials to accept their petition for a referendum against the leftist leader.
Waving flags, banners and copies of their petition signatures, protesters streamed along a highway in the capital to demand the National Electoral Council allow them a chance to challenge Chavez at the ballot box this year.
Opposition leaders fear that Chavez sympathizers in the council are trying to scuttle their referendum campaign in the latest political battle over his five-year presidency.
PHOTO: EPA
"We have to march to defend our signatures. We don't trust the electoral council and this is our only recourse, to protest," said Guillermo Goitia, a local opposition party representative.
Several thousand National Guard troops backed by armored vehicles along the route kept opposition protesters away from pockets of jeering Chavez sympathizers.
A huge popular market set up by the government blocked the march path to the council headquarters in downtown Caracas.
After two years of conflict over the Chavez government, the opposition now hopes to vote out the former army officer whom they portray as a would-be dictator bent on turning Venezuela into a Cuba-style communist state.
The National Electoral Council has said it will announce on Feb. 29 whether the opposition handed in the 2.4 million valid signatures required to call a presidential referendum.
But setbacks in the verification process and accusations of fraud inside the council have stirred fears of fresh political violence in the world's No. 5 oil exporter, a leading supplier of crude oil and gasoline to the US.
Electoral authorities missed a self-imposed Feb. 13 deadline to announce the results of their checks, sparking opposition anger.
Chavez has battled increasing opposition to his self-styled revolution for the poor after surviving a brief coup in 2002. But he says most Venezuelans back his social reforms aimed at more fairly distributing the nation's huge oil wealth.
The president vowed on Friday he would go to the supreme court to challenge any ruling allowing a referendum. He says the opposition petition is tainted by tens of thousands of forged and false signatures.
"All Venezuela knows that this was a disaster, a fraud. There were dead people and children who signed up," pro-Chavez assembly deputy Nicolas Maduro told reporters.
A referendum could be held around May if the council decides to allow a vote. The opposition says it collected 3.4 million signatures.
One of the council's directors said on Saturday officials were discussing a proposal to clear up a dispute over how to verify signature forms filled in with the same person's handwriting, which the government has challenged.
The Organization of American States and the Atlanta-based Carter Center, which are monitoring the verification, have reported administrative delays due to the complexity of the checks.
Observers have so far not supported claims of massive fraud, but they have warned the council not to become bogged down in technicalities.
"I don't think the international community has realized that the future of democracy in Latin America depends on how the Venezuelan case plays out," opposition leader Julio Borges said at Saturday's rally.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS