Venezuela's presidential recall referendum advances to next stage

A presidential recall referendum spearheaded by Venezuela's right-wing opposition has met the legal conditions to advance to the next stage, the National Electoral Council (CNE) said Tuesday.

The process is moving forward "with absolute normalcy," CNE Director Luis Emilio Rondon said, contradicting the opposition's claims that the government has stymied the process.

The opposition campaign to unseat President Nicolas Maduro via a recall referendum got off to a bumpy start, after a large number of the signatures backing the bid were found by the CNE to be fraudulent.

While officials opened investigations into the alleged fraud, the administrative procedure continues "through each stage in keeping with the regulations," said Rondon.

The Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), the country's right-wing coalition, submitted in June about 2 million signatures, more than they needed in support of the recall vote, of which more than a third were invalidated for a range of irregularities.

The MUD met the requirement to collect the signatures of at least one percent of the country's eligible voters, Tibisay Lucena, the president of the CNE, said Monday.

The MUD will have to show the recall vote has the backing of 20 percent of registered voters, meaning it has to collect 4 million signatures. Endi