Venezuela’s interim president Juan Guaidó on Friday accused dictator Nicolás Maduro of not allowing citizens to collect signatures to activate a referendum to revoke the presidency’s mandate. “What is Maduro afraid of? Won’t even allow signatures with a CNE [Conselho Nacional Eleitoral] kidnapped by you. You are weaker than anyone believes. The dictatorship does not take care of form, it is evident, it is a minority and continues to steal the vote,” Guaidó said on Twitter.
The CNE has set for next Wednesday, January 26, the day when citizens will be able to collect enough signatures – corresponding to 20% of the electorate in each state – to activate the referendum. The entity informed that 1,200 voting centers will also be created across the country, taking into account the “electoral weight of each federal entity in the country”.
According to the CNE, the electoral register that will be used to validate this signature collection process will be the same that was approved for the regional and local elections on November 21 last year, with 21,929,987 registered voters. “In order to fulfill the requirement to activate the presidential revocation referendum, 20% of the electoral registration must be achieved, as established by the Constitutional Room of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) in 2016,” he added.
César Pérez Vivas, one of the promoters of the recall referendum campaign, criticized the timetable released by the CNE for this process. “It is a joke to announce today, for next Wednesday, the opening of 1,200 centers so that 20 million citizens can exercise their right to vote. This is like putting a thousand liters of water in a five-liter container,” he complained on Twitter.
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