By Humberto Márquez
CARACAS, Apr 21 2004 (IPS)

Venezuela has finally reached the decisive stretch of the opposition’s year-long struggle to activate a recall referendum against President Hugo Chávez.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) ruled Wednesday that the opposition has from May 28-30 to confirm nearly 1.2 million signatures that the electoral authorities had called into question.

A minimum of 2.43 million signatures – 20 percent of voters – are needed to trigger a referendum. But the CNE only approved just over 1.9 million of the nearly 3.5 million signatures handed in last December by the Democratic Coordinator opposition coalition, while declaring 375,000 invalid and ruling that 1.19 million must be submitted to a verification process.

Those 1.19 million signatures include around 900,000 that were disputed because the same handwriting was used to fill in many of the petition forms, which led the CNE to wonder whether the signatures were forged by opposition activists.

If the necessary number of signatures are validated, the referendum could be held on Aug. 8, said the president of the CNE, Francisco Carrasquero.

The date is a key factor in the struggle for power, and in determining whether or not Chávez’s self-styled ”peaceful revolution” in favour of the poor will continue.

If the referendum is held before Aug. 19 and the president loses, he will have to step down, and early elections will be called. But if it takes place after that date and he is defeated, Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel – who Chávez himself appointed – would complete the presidential term, which ends in January 2007.

Chávez’s followers ”do not want the referendum, because the opposition strategy is to destabilise the country,” said Elías Jaua, the president’s former secretary and the head of Chávez’s Fifth Republic Movement.

”If the referendum is held and the opposition loses, they’ll claim anyway that there was fraud, and will try to impede governability,” he argued.

The Democratic Coordinator, a coalition of 27 parties and 40 business, labour and social groups, is divided over whether to agree to the signature verification process. But most of the groups are expected to follow the lead of the main opposition parties, and accept, according to spokespersons and analysts.

”We have the opportunity to go to a (signature) reparations period,” said Alberto Quirós, who for four weeks has represented the Democratic Coordinator in negotiations with the CNE over the rules that would govern the verification process.

Felipe Mújica, another opposition delegate who has taken part in the talks, said ”we are facing better conditions” now.

The negotiations were observed by delegates from the Organisation of American States (OAS) and the Carter Centre.

A year ago, an accord mediated by OAS Secretary-General César Gaviria was signed by the government and the opposition, who agreed to come up with an electoral solution to Venezuela’s extreme political polarisation.

In April 2002, protests, rioting and an aborted coup d’etat that removed Chávez for two days left a death toll of 60, a December 2002-January 2003 general strike by the opposition caused 10 billion dollars in losses, and 13 people were killed in opposition demonstrations that led to disturbances in late February and early March this year.

Within the Democratic Coordinator, influential former socialist leader Pompeyo Márquez urged people to come out and confirm their signatures in late May. ”We must exhaust all channels for a peaceful, electoral solution, to avoid any more bloodshed over this cause. And in politics, you don’t do what you want, you do what you can,” he argued.

”There is no other option than to validate our signatures in a massive turn-out” said Emilio Rondón, a leader of the social democratic Democratic Action party, the leading opposition force.

The head of another traditional party, the christian democratic COPEI, César Pérez, said ”if it is feasible to reach the number of signatures required to activate the referendum, we are in favour of the verification process.”

The opposition needs an additional 525,000 valid signatures, or 44 percent of the ones that were disputed by the CNE.

But while the traditional parties, including the moderate socialists, are inclined to agree to the verification period, smaller, newer parties like the right-wing Justice First and Project Venezuela and the centrist Radical Cause and Bravo Pueblo have refused to participate.

”The signatures do not belong to the parties or to the Democratic Coordinator, but to the citizens, and they can’t be negotiated,” said opposition legislator Carlos Berrizbeitia of Project Venezuela. Andrés Velásquez of Radical Cause complained that the CNE ”has swindled the people, and democracy.”

The civil society organisations belonging to the Democratic Coordinator are also divided. Leonardo Carvajal with Assembly for Education backed the negotiations, but Cecilia Sosa of the Citizens Assembly said that ”participating in a verification process amounts to going to the hangman’s scaffold.”

”I believe the Coordinator is trapped in a cage that was designed for it by the OAS and the Carter Centre,” complained Sosa, a former Supreme Court president.

Political analysts like Fausto Masó believe the opposition will end up accepting, ”because if they don’t, the only alternative left is insurrection.”

The CNE also announced that the regional and local elections will be held on Sep. 26, instead of Aug. 1. The petitions seeking recall votes for legislators and town councillors, collected by government opponents as well as supporters, will also be subjected to a verification period, set for May 21-23.

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