Venezuela's electoral body announces continuation of presidential recall process

The president of Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE), Tibisay Lucena, announced on Friday the beginning of the second phase for an eventual call for a recall referendum.

The motion against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is being driven by the local opposition.

The electoral authority confirmed the existence of multiple irregularities in the form containing almost two million signatures, handed over on May 2 by the opposition's electoral coalition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).

However, Lucena assured that the process "is progressing towards the second phase" which consists of validating these signatures by installing biometric identification systems in the electoral offices located in every one of the country's 23 states and one capital district.

Within the anomalies, 605,727 signatures do not meet the criteria established in the CNE's regulations. From this figure, 10,975 signatures correspond to data from deceased people while 9,373 identities do not exist and 3,003 people that signed are underage.

For this initial process, the opposition needed to hand in 197,978 signatures or expressions of will corresponding to one percent of the Venezuelan electorate which consists of over 19.7 million voters. Endit