The Devil's Excrement

Good article by Juan Raffalli in page 1-17 of El Universal entitled “Falsehoods about the recall referendum”. Some highlights:

–It’s necessary to consider first the requests for recall referenda for regional officials. False. The same regulation that establishes that requests have to be handled in the order in which they are received  states that in the interest of public interest priority may be given to requests that were introduced later. It is obvious that the presidential recall referendum has the highest national interest and it was thus established in the international agreement signed on May 29^th. by both the Government and the opposition.

–Before the recall referendum the national Electoral Commission has to be restructured in the next six months (Chávez dixit). False. The Organic Law of electoral power establishes among its transient articles that the Electoral Board has to adjust itself to the law within six months, but that period is a maximum temporal reference. But nowhere in that law is it established that there can be no electoral events simultaneously. If that were the case, the right to vote would be suspended, which is not possible even in the case of states of exception.

–Special regulations are required for the recall referendum: In any case, it would be regulations for the internal functioning (of the CNE). The Constitution expressly states that no fundamental right, which includes the right to vote, can be limited or suspended due to the lack of regulations. The agreement last May 29^th.  and prior decisions by the Supreme Court give full validity to the Suffrage Law which has articles about recall referenda which are perfectly applicable to the one in question.

–The signatures are fraudulent: It has been said that due to non-essential formalisms one can not sacrifice the right to express or petition, which would attempt against articles 5 and 62 of the Constitution. Moreover, what other requirement could be asked of those that sign the petition. Their blood group, their license plate? Only the people are entitled to initiate calling for a recall referendum according to Article 72 of the Constitution, which is explicitly mentioned in the petition. Could it be that more than two million people have to go to a public notary to certify their signatures? And how were the signatures verified to register in front of the CNE, Chavez’ MVR or to register hundreds of candidates to the Constituent Assembly? In any case, the best thing is that in the end if we were to have to collect the signatures anew, that event will be in itself an anticipated recall act so that for that one that may be recalled the remedy might be worse than the illness.

This entry was posted on September 7, 2003 at 1:47 pm and is filed under Venezuela.