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Electoral Council to validate signatures for recall referendum in Venezuela

Xinhua, April 30, 2016 Adjust font size:

Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) is set to begin the process of validating signatures gathered to begin a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro, its director, Luis Emilio Rondon, announced on Friday.

In a statement given to Venezuelan news website, Noticias 24, the executive said that the CNE will check whether the signatures have reached 1 percent of the electorate, needed to begin the referendum process.

If the CNE decides these signatures are sufficient, then, the opposition will be given the significantly harder task of collecting signatures from over 20 percent of the entire electoral roll within three days for the referendum to go ahead.

Rondon explained that the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) would have to collect close to 4 million signatures in that very short window to make its referendum call effective.

"If this is reached, the referendum would have to take place within 90 days," added Rondon.

Despite this task, the MUD has been confident it would be able to reach the 4 million target. With the opposition having collected the 197,978 signatures needed for the 1 percent margin on April 27 and 28, MUD leader Henrique Capriles Radonski stated on Friday on Twitter that "we collected over 1.5 million votes within hours", hinting that the 4 million target was reachable.

The referendum to dismiss President Nicolas Maduro has been one of the main platform positions by the MUD since it won a landslide parliamentary election in December 2015. Enditem