A vote next year would allow his vice-president to take over until the end of his term.
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Venezuela’s National Election council says the country’s opposition will likely be able to hold a further signature drive in late October.
“It is determined that the vote happens as quickly as possible”, announced Tibisay Lucena, National Electoral Council President.
After the month-long petition verification process is complete, if there are sufficient numbers of approved signatures, then the CNE must schedule a recall election within 90 days afterwards.
Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro confirmed Carlos Faria as the South American country’s economy chief in the official gazette distributed Wednesday after first appointing him as industry minister in a cabinet shakeup last week. But when The Journal got in touch with them, none of the schools said he held a staff position.
A recent survey by pollster Venebarometro indicated that almost two-thirds of voters would vote against Maduro, who has branded the economic crisis and the efforts to unseat him a capitalist conspiracy.
Constitutional expert Jose Ignacio Hernandez calculated that the referendum could be held by January 4.
Moreover, Maduro has recently handed over “extraordinary powers” to the military to help combat the country’s shortage of food and medicine, which appears to be another example of a desperate government trying to take control of a desperate situation. However, the right-wing opposition did not begin gathering signatures from citizens in support of the recall referendum until May.
“The region is changing”, Capriles, a two-time presidential candidate, told a news conference in Lima.
“It knows very well that blocking the constitutional and democratic path places Venezuela in a highly risky situation”.
Anti-government protests in 2014 left 43 people dead.
She elaborated, “we are living in a political context of confrontation in which some political factors are seeking to distort the norms or the application of the law to demolish electoral authority.”[7] In other words, Venezuela’s recent history provides examples of recall referenda that were petitioned with illegitimate reasons.
Lucena in turn lashed out at the opposition.
“This country, from an economic and social perspective, is a powder keg”, said Torrealba, the executive secretary of the often disparate opposition coalition, which encompasses some 30 political parties.
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“The way things are going and in light of the massive fraud that has been committed, I am sure there won’t be one in 2017 either”.
