This Saturday, January 22, the promoters of the referendum request that seeks to revoke the mandate of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, announced that they disagree with the conditions set by the electoral authorities of that country to collect the more than 4.2 million signatures necessary to convene said act.
This after the National Electoral Council (CNE) announced yesterday that the promoters who seek the opening of the referendum will only be able to collect signatures, next Wednesday, using 1,200 centers, for a period not exceeding 12 hours.
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The answers did not wait. Roberto Picón, one of the directors of the CNE, publicly denounced that it is not possible collect the rubrics of 20% of the electoral register —composed of 20.9 million active voters— in that period, since “They would have to process five voters per minute, for 12 hours, in all the machines of the country, no margin of error“.
Just to get an idea, in the 2018 presidential elections in which Maduro was “supposedly” reelected to hold office until 2025, the CNE authorized more than 14,000 voting centers. That is, 12 times more venues and 12 times more likely to reach everyone.
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Therefore, the promoters of the recall decided to abort his attempt to get the signatures, but not before anticipating that all instances exhausted and will turn to whomever is necessary, inside or outside the country, to access their right.
“We consider it really inappropriate to waste time in queues (…). We cannot act recklessly and irresponsibly and throw people into some rows that are not going to produce the result we want” said opposition leader César Pérez Vivas, who is part of the Venezuelan Movement for Recall (MOVER).
