Venezuela’s government has “no intention of allowing a recall vote to occur this year and will continue to drag its feet throughout the process so as to push it into 2017”, Eurasia Group analysts Risa Grais-Targow and Agata Ciesielska wrote in research note August 1.
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(Vatican Radio) Venezuela’s National Electoral Agency indicates that a push for a referendum on the leadership of Nicolas Maduro won’t be in time to precipitate a Presidential Election.
If all the requisites established by the regulations are fulfilled, the collection of signatures, with all their technical, security, operational and logistical aspects. probably collecting the signatures of 20 percent of registered voters will take place around the end of October, Lucena told reporters. Officials said more than 600,000 signatures submitted on an opposition petition in May belonged to people ineligible to vote – including deceased and fictional persons and children.
Lucena said that, once the signatures are collected, there will be a series of intervals for the reception of signatures, verification and declarations of inadmissibility, which could more or less take between 28 and 29 days..
He has launched legal challenges against the referendum drive, alleging fraud in the petition process, and vowed there will be no recall vote this year.
The opposition says Maduro controls the electoral authorities and accuses them of delaying the referendum procedures. The group will hold informal talks on the sidelines of a conference in Algiers next month, though OPEC has shown no signs of ditching the Saudi-led strategy of letting prices fall to maximize market share.
Electoral affairs specialist Eugenio Martinez said the referendum may not happen until February “if the CNE makes an effort to impose unnecessary delays”.
“This is an exercise in cynicism and lies from Ms. Lucena”, DUR leader Henrique Capriles said.
Opposition leaders are calling for a nationwide march to the capital of Caracas on September 1 to demand the council set a firm date for the next signature drive.
“The elections officials know that closing the tiny window of democratic change that we still have puts the country in a very unsafe place”, Capriles said at a news conference. The country has seen looting and protests over the worsening situation.
“Attempts are being made to apply maximum pressure to make the people think that the law is being applied arbitrarily”.
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“We had already said it was completely impossible to meet the deadlines to hold a recall referendum in 2016”, he said.
