Opposition cries foul as Venezuela blocks recall
Rulings effectively halt move to push for president’s removal
CARACAS— The Venezuelan opposition’s campaign to oust President Nicolas Maduro has been thrown into disarray with elections officials’ decision to suspend a recall drive against the socialist leader a week before it was to start.
In a related move, a court appeared to issue a ruling Friday blocking key opposition leaders from leaving the country.
With the latest actions, the government has effectively halted the effort to stage a recall effort that polls suggest Maduro would have lost by a wide margin.
The ruling comes just days before critics of the socialist administration were to start gathering the one-fifth of voters’ signatures needed to place the issue on the ballot.
“This is a big deal and reveals that the government was fearful of what could happen in the three-day signature collection period. They have effectively postponed the recall referendum indefinitely. This measure makes it difficult to think of Venezuela as a democracy,” said David Smilde, a Venezuela expert at the Washington Office on Latin America.
Officials cited alleged fraud in a preliminary effort to get one per cent of voters’ signatures as justification for blocking the opposition from proceeding to the next stage of the referendum on Maduro’s removal.
His critics blame the late president Hugo Chavez’s heir for Venezuela’s economic collapse, bare store shelves and the jailing of opposition leaders.
The opposition immediately blasted the decision as unconstitutional.
“The government is pushing toward a very dangerous scenario,” former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said on Twitter.
Capriles and opposition spokesperson Jesus Torrealba on Friday posted a document online that appeared to be from a local court and barred eight leaders from leaving the embattled South American country without giving a reason.
The suspension of the recall came as a shock to many Venezuelans, who were gearing up for the chance to sign petitions next week seeking the embattled leader’s removal.
To trigger a stay-or-go referendum, the opposition needed to collect and validate some four million signatures from 20 per cent of the electorate in 24 states over three days next week.
Critics of Venezuela’s 17-year left-wing administration have made the recall their central political issue after being sidelined in Congress and in virtually all other public institutions this year.
But the campaign had already become mostly symbolic after elections officials in September said no vote would take place this year.