In a previous article, I covered the process of the first round of gathering signatures in favor of the presidential recall referendum against Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelan people knew that there were going to be many problems in the course development towards this referendum, but they never expected for the issues to be as insolent, shameless and borderline cynical as they turned out to be.
After the National Electoral Council, or CNE, allegedly counted and processed every single said signature, new problems arose. Even after collecting over 2.500.000 signatures for the referendum, when we only needed 200.000, many people’s signatures were invalidated under the idea that “they weren’t signatory to the referendum” or that they failed to correctly fill the required details for the signature to be deemed valid. More than 600.000 people had their signatures annulled, including important figures of the Venezuelan right-wing opposition such as Henrique Capriles, one of the leaders of this opposition and Lilian Tintori, prisoner of conscience Leopoldo Lopez’s wife and leading figure of this political movement in her own right.
Nevertheless, the governing Socialist Party has taken it upon themselves to accuse the opposition of submitting fraudulent signatures. “Almost 190,000 of them were deceased people," said Jorge Rodriguez, head of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. He also noted, regarding Capriles’ case, that he omitted to put down his fingerprint next to his signature, and mockingly questioned “How can a leader be so irresponsible to forgo to fulfill such a simple requirement?”
Even after the purging of the many signatures, there were still enough to meet the required amount and continue with the process. According to the rules set by the National Electoral Council, the next step was gathering the signatures of at least one percent of registered voters in each of the 24 Venezuelan states, meaning that depending of the population of each state, the required amount would vary. It is important to point out that these “rules” were made up by the National Electoral Council, as they are not present in our constitution.
Floods of People
The collection of signatures started this past Monday, June 20th in all states and wrapped up on Friday, June 23th, with thousands of Venezuelans having finished giving their fingerprints to electoral authorities, concluding a key stage in the ousting of President Maduro.
Despite the many obstructions present, Venezuelans turned out in droves and went to the polls for the second time in just a few months to reaffirm their need to trigger a presidential recall this year.
In a press conference a few hours after the polls had been closed, Henrique Capriles, right-wing opposition leader, assured that "the total national validation, in spite of all the obstacles, is 409,313 signatures. The annulment will happen in 2016.”
Other Venezuelan opposition figures took Twitter to reaffirm that enough valid signatures had been collected to move forward the process.
The next step is in hands of the election authorities. In theory, the authorities would have to officially approve the signatures within the next 20 days and set a date for the next round of voting, which would require for the collection of about four million signatures in just three days to activate the referendum process.
Same Old
Organizers and civilians went on social media platforms to report the many obstructions the government had imposed over the process.
Only 300 biometric voting machines, which use a fingerprint recognition system, were provided by the National Electoral Council to cover all registered voters in favor of the referendum. In addition to this, machines were placed in areas where the number of registered voters wasn’t as pronounced, leaving areas where the registered voters amounts were significantly higher without a voting machine.
This issue obliged voters to temporarily migrate to remote locations in order to take part in the polls.
Regardless of the efforts by opposition groups to mobilize as many people to the polls as possible, making use of buses and other forms of transportation due to the distance of the machines from the heavily populated areas, planned roadblocks were abundant, forcing some to even cross rivers to fulfill their right as happened in the state of Aragua.
Arbitrary poll closings were also increasingly common during this process. Even when the Venezuelan constitution states that the polling stations are prohibited to close if there are still voters in line, Socorro Hernandez, one of the deans of the National Electoral Council, required the polling booths to close at 4 pm, disregarding the proper extension dictated by the constitution.
The government is dragging its feet as long as possible in hopes to delay the recall as if it happens this year, new elections would be triggered. However, if it happens next year, President Maduro would handpick a successor to finish out his term through 2019, leaving free will for the oppressive government to keep his vile practices up.
