The Venezuelan government on Tuesday asked electoral authorities to ban the opposition coalition seeking to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in a recall vote, accusing them of massive fraud.
Ratcheting up the tension in a country pushed to the brink of collapse by an economic crisis, Maduro’s camp hit back with a vengeance on the same day the opposition was hoping to get a green light to go ahead with its bid to hold a recall referendum.
“We have just asked for the cancelation of the registration of the Democratic Unity Roundtable [MUD], for being involved in the worst vote fraud in the country’s history,” said Jorge Rodriguez, Maduro’s designated aide to monitor the recall process.
Photo: Reuters
He accused the opposition of including the names of thousands of dead people, convicts and minors in a petition submitted in May with 1.8 million signatures requesting a recall vote.
The opposition has denied such charges, accusing the authorities of stalling.
Tuesday was the final day for the National Electoral Council to rule whether the opposition successfully collected at least 200,000 valid signatures, the first stage of the long recall procedures.
Near the end of the day, the council said it would only meet on Monday to examine its auditors’ report on the petition.
It did not say when it would announce its ruling.
“The electoral authority will not accept pressure,” it said in a statement. “It is acting in strict compliance with the law.”
Maduro’s opponents are racing to complete the process by Jan. 10, the cutoff to trigger new elections.
After that date — four years into the president’s six-year term — a successful recall vote would simply transfer power to Maduro’s hand-picked vice president.
Venezuela has sunk into crisis as global prices for its main export, oil, have collapsed.
The economy is set to contract 8 percent this year, its third year of recession, a UN panel forecast on Tuesday.
A recent poll found 64 percent of Venezuelans would vote to remove Maduro in a referendum.
However, time is not on the opposition’s side.
Even if the election council validates the initial recall petition, the opposition will still have to collect another 4 million signatures, or 20 percent of the electorate, in just three days.
If those signatures are accepted, it would force a recall referendum. To win it, Maduro’s opponents would need more votes than he won the election with in 2013 — about 7.5 million.
Maduro’s camp has plenty of ways to stall. Besides seeking to have the MUD declared illegal, Maduro’s allies have filed more than 8,000 legal challenges to the referendum drive with prosecutors and the Supreme Court.
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