Venezuelan wranglings
Editorial
Stabroek News
March 14, 2004
The situation in Venezuela is highly volatile, with the gulf between the Chavistas and the opposition growing ever wider. The current tensions are immediately related to the recall referendum on Mr Chavez's presidency, seen by the opposition alliance as the constitutional route to his ouster.
After a failed coup attempt in April 2002, and a crippling oil strike which began at the end of that year, the opposition fell into line with the law, and sought a recall referendum half way through Mr Chavez's term, as provided for under the constitution. In order for such a poll to be held, however, 20% of eligible voters - about 2.4 million - first had to sign petition forms requesting that the recall be held. The signing exercise took place between November 28 and December 1, last year, at designated centres, and the opposition has claimed that a million more signatures were submitted than the number which was actually required.
The petition exercise itself went off peacefully and transparently enough under the watchful eyes of OAS and Carter Center observers, but controversy and confrontations have dogged it ever since, particularly after the National Electoral Council (CNE) discounted around 1.1 million of the 3.4 million signatures handed in. It is not that the council has rejected these forms outright; it has done that only in the case of 140,000 other petition forms. Rather it has said that the signatures are in question, and that it will publish the lists of disputed signatures, and open the registration centres for two days again later this month so that those on the list could go and confirm that they had, in fact, signed.
Opposition newspapers were quick to point out the impracticality of the verification procedures, when more than a million signatures were involved. Nevertheless, the CNE's announcement at first put the oppostion into disarray, some leaders believing that they could get 600,000 signatories - the minimum required - to come forward to verify that they had signed the petition forms in the first instance, and others insisting that there should be no participation in the exercise because it was yet another tactic by the Chavista-dominated CNE to frustrate the holding of the recall vote. The Government denied this accusation, its supporters retorting that if President Chavez really controlled the council, the signatures would have been voided outright, and there would have been no second opportunity made available for verification.
In the meantime President Chavez has been using his Sunday-night programmes on television - which recently have been lasting five hours and are required to be carried by all stations - to accuse the opposition of massive fraud, and of submitting forms in the names of dead people. At least one of the 'departed' named by the head of state last Sunday, came forward to insist noisily that he was still very much alive, and that it was in this animate condition that he had voluntarily signed the petition.
Reuters has reported the opposition as claiming that its checks had revealed that more than quarter of a million signatures were being rejected or disputed without any reason being stated for their rejection. In addition, it was said, 54% of the total in question did not reflect the problem which CNE had cited, namely, that personal data had been entered on the form in different handwriting from the signature.
Whatever the truth or otherwise of any of this, there is some indication that the OAS and the Carter Center are concerned both about the invalidation of the 1.1 million signatures, and the process by which the CNE would like them validated. The Finanacial Times last week reported diplomats as saying that a sampling of the signatures in dispute carried out by the OAS suggested that 93% of them were valid, while in a joint statement both that organization and the Carter Center proposed an entirely different approach to the matter of verification.
They said that they had presented the CNE with "a technically viable proposal previously used in several countries and supported by international experts..." The suggestion was to draw "a statistically representative random sample from the universe of signatures," and then compare one by one, the fingerprints and signatures appearing on the petition forms with those newly provided by the signers. They said that by this method the council would be in a position to determine the scope of the problem, and following that, could then decide on the appropriate method of appeal. At the moment, this proposal is in limbo.
As things stand, the opposition has taken the matter of the CNE's ruling on the signatures to the Electoral Chamber (Court) of Venezuela's Supreme Court. However on Friday, El Universal reported that the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court had ordered the Electoral Chamber to refrain from ruling on any cases pertaining to the recall referendum until it (i.e. the Constitutional Chamber) had decided on an application from a pro-government campaign group that it take over all such matters itelf.
El Universal also alleged on Friday that this decision had been made by only three judges of the five-man Constitutional Chamber, when a ruling requires the concurrence of four judges. In addition, said the daily, in contrast to the Constitutional Chamber, the Electoral Chamber included three judges perceived to be opposed to the Government. It might be noted that on Thursday, the Supreme Court rejected separate objections brought by the same campaign group as well as the lawyer for the CNE to two of the judges on the Electoral Chamber on the grounds of lack of impartiality.
The very least that can be said is that there is ample room here for legal wrangling and delay.
As many observers have pointed out, even if President Chavez cannot in the end avoid a referendum, he can perhaps delay it for long enough to prevent his Government going out of office even if he had to step down as head of state. If it comes too early in the year and he loses, then under the constitution there would have to be an election - although as most observers have noted too, it should not be assumed that even if President Chavez lost a recall vote, he would necessarily lose the election which followed.
Whatever happens in relation to the disputed signatures, and whether or not there is a recall referendum eventually, the prognostications for the stability of Venezuela are not good at the moment. The polarization between the two sides, and the high level of mistrust and suspicion - which will not have been improved by the recent revelation that the United States has been funding elements in the Venezuelan opposition - make the kind of compromises necessary to work through a solution to the current difficulties over the signatures that much more complicated.