Posted on 05/31/2004 5:02:12 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS - With unofficial estimates leaning in favor of a recall referendum against President Hugo Chávez, delays in the results of a signature verification process seemed likely on Sunday as election officials raised a number of concerns.
In the meantime, Chávez assured former President Jimmy Carter he would abide by the results whatever they are.
''We cannot allow this process to be tainted,'' Francisco Carrasquero, president of the National Electoral Council, said of the three-day effort in which voters could either ratify or withdraw their support for an August recall referendum that would determine if Chávez should remain in office.
After a private meeting, Carter said Chávez was ''looking forward to complete the resolution'' of the signature verification process known here as the ''repair'' or reparo in Spanish.
''If the reparo is successful and names are secure, he's completely willing and eager to go to the referendum,'' Carter said.
''Let's hope we all accept the results,'' Chávez said later. ``I would gladly face a referendum. . . . If they defeat me, I'll leave.''
Results from the verification process, which ended Sunday, are supposed to be announced no later than June 5, but Carrasquero indicated that could be delayed if serious problems were detected. That possibility got a strong response from opposition leaders.
''There must not be any delays,'' said Alberto Quiros, a spokesman for Democratic Coordinator, an opposition umbrella group. ``We are in the final stretch.''
But there were allegations of fraud and accusations that two international monitors were really U.S. State Department employees.
Carrasquero said authorities had seized a machine allegedly used to churn out fake identification cards and arrested several people who tried to commit fraud. Authorities also raided several opposition party offices where they claimed to have found fake I.D. cards. The electoral council also was checking into allegations that two monitors working with the Atlanta-based Carter Center had links to the State Department.
The monitors were identified as David Myers and Carl Meacham. Officials from the Carter Center said neither were State Department employees. Myers is a political science professor at Penn State University and Meacham is an advisor for Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
More than 100 observers from Carter Center and the Organization of American States served as monitors in the verification process that involved some 1.2 million signatures turned into the electoral council in December as part of a petition for a recall referendum that could cut short the six-year term of Chávez, reelected in 2000.
The opposition that organized the petition drive submitted about 3.4 million signatures, but officials only validated 1.9 million. More than half a million signatures are needed to meet the roughly 2.4 million required to force a referendum.
The prognosis remained unclear late Sunday as authorities continued to tabulate the results. However, opposition leaders took to the air for a victory speech that was abruptly interrupted by election officials.
Unofficial preliminary results placed the number of signatures in favor of the referendum at nearly 700,000, compared to nearly 82,000 signatures withdrawn.
Government supporters, meanwhile, called for an audit of all the signatures turned in since Friday. Willian Lara, head of a government-organized electoral campaign called Commando Ayacucho, asserted that the signatures on the list reaffirming the recall referendum included 5,382 names that belonged to deceased voters. ''A reasonable doubt exists,'' Lara said. ``An audit should be done.''
Carter said he hoped the results would not be delayed by ``technical excuses.''
Special correspondent Phil Gunson contributed to this report.
Is anybody surprised?
I have no doubt that he is going to be able to carry this off. Like Saddam, he has found that delaying and making empty promises to the "international community" is the way to deal with pressure.
Saddam did it for decades, all the while running his terrorist dictatorship, and I think Chavez is well on the way to doing this, too.
Ping to a couple of people I have noticed on Chavez related threads.
Is he as honest as Kim Jong Il, Jimmah?
What tyrant has ever given up power voluntarily? There is only one possible end for Chavez.
They seen their last free election. Jimmah Cahtah or no Jimmah Cahtah.
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