Chavez's aide warns against recall issue
CARACAS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government said yesterday it would not allow international observers to overrule local electoral authorities on whether the leftist leader should face a recall referendum.
In a further sign that Venezuela's referendum process was running into trouble, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel delivered the warning to Peter DeShazo, a visiting US envoy, at a time when the credibility of the country's national electoral body was increasingly under fire.
Opponents of Chavez accuse the National Electoral Council of siding with the populist president by using technical objections to obstruct their signature petition seeking a recall vote against him this year.
They want the international community -- represented by observers from the Organization of American States, or OAS, and the US Carter Center -- to ensure the poll goes ahead. Electoral officials are due to announce a decision Feb. 29.
After holding talks in Caracas with Rangel, DeShazo, the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, stressed the importance of the foreign electoral observers in guaranteeing a fair ruling on the referendum.
"The United States firmly supports the work of the OAS and the Carter Center," he told reporters.
But in a response that revealed sharp differences, Venezuela's vice president said the decision by local electoral authorities must be paramount.
"We cannot accept . . . that the opinion of the Carter Center and the OAS be placed above the National Electoral Council," he said.
"Let the United States, France, Britain, and the international community be clear about this," Rangel added.
Chavez, a former paratrooper who was elected president in 1998, has condemned the referendum petition as riddled with fraudulent signatures. He says the referendum petition should be rejected.
After two years of intense political feuding that included a brief 2002 coup against Chavez and successive strikes and street protests, the president and his opponents appear to be heading again for a collision over the referendum issue.
Foes of Chavez, who accuse him of dragging the country toward Cuba-style communism, threaten a campaign of civil disobedience if the recall poll is turned down.
Tens of thousands of antigovernment marchers turned out in Caracas Saturday to presssure the electoral authorities to allow a vote.
The president, who dismisses critics of his self-styled "revolution" as rich, resentful "oligarchs," says that if electoral officials allow a referendum, he will fight the ruling in the Supreme Court.
After the electoral council missed a deadline Friday to decide on a vote, the OAS and Carter Center urged it to respect the intention of those who had signed the referendum petition.
This, the observers argued, was more important than worrying about "excessive technicalities" in the signature-verification process that could delay the poll decision.
