Recall Me If You Can!
By Onai
HAVANA TIMES – In Venezuela’s Constitution, Article 72 stipulates that “All magistrates and other offices filled by popular vote are subject to recall. Once half of the term of office to which an official has been elected has elapsed, to set in motion a recall requires the signature of 20% of the electorate.”
Thanks to this “good nature” of our Constitution, a group of Venezuelans have set out to recall President Nicolas Maduro via a Recall Referendum.
However, the fact that the Constitution provides us with the opportunity to get out from beneath a dictator’s yoke, via the ballot box, doesn’t mean to say that the ruling party will be so easily convinced into obeying the laws of our country.
This is why the first step in sabotaging this initiative has come from the CNE (National Electoral Council). With most of its members belonging to the ruling party, this body has decreed that the 4.2 million signatures needed to activate the recall referendum will need to be collected in just 1,200 towns and in the absurd time frame of 12 hours.
By the way, these signatures can’t be handwritten, but need to be recorded with electronic devices, and in order to meet the target, they’d have to collect five signatures per minute at each station.
As if this wasn’t too much of a joke already, the first PSUV vice-president, Diosdado Cabello, warned “We reserve the right to go before the CNE and ask for the list of those asking for a recall referendum. The rules of the game are crystal clear. If you are calling for a recall referendum, you can’t be in hiding. One of the things that we have on our agenda is to go to the CNE and ask for the list of people who have signed to recall our president.”
Diosdado said that if citizens have the right to call a recall referendum, then President Nicolas has the right to know the names of those who want to recall him.