Robyn Marshall & Alison Dellit

On March 23, the constitutional chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Court overturned a ruling of the court’s electoral chamber regarding the validity of 876,017 signatures submitted as part of a campaign to unseat President Hugo Chavez. The decision is a win for Chavez and his supporters.

Under the Venezuelan constitution, a recall election must be held if 20% of voters request it. For months, Venezuela’s pro-US, pro-big business “opposition” campaigned to get enough signatures — 2.4 million — to force the pro-worker, pro-poor Chavez to a re-election. Finally, it submitted what it claimed was enough signatures to the National Electoral Council (CNE).

On March 2, however, the CNE found that only 1,832,493 signatures were valid, rejected those whose details were written in bulk in the same handwriting and those whose owners were dead at the time of signing. The opposition claims that the forms were filled in by volunteers in advance to save time, allowing people to simply sign. The commission recommended that 2700 electoral offices be reopened to allow these 1.1 million signatories to reconfirm their signatures.

On March 15, however, the electoral chamber (which is composed of two judges) decided to rule 800,000 of the disputed votes valid, despite not having seen the ballots and being prohibited from doing so by the CNE. The court allegedly heard arguments from the opposition organising the recall campaign, but did not allow the CNE to put its case, thus contravening the constitution.

This decision gave the opposition enough valid votes to force Chavez to a recall election, although there was immediate dispute over the court’s right to make such a ruling.

The constitutional chamber, which is a higher court than the electoral chamber, has overturned the decision. The court ratified the competence of the electoral branch of government to decide on the norms that regulate electoral processes and referenda, as well as decide on the authenticity of the petitioners requesting referenda.

This does not stop the recall process, but allows the process of rechecking the disputed signatures to continue. If 600,000 people reconfirm, then the recall will go ahead. If not, then it won’t.

“With the process of revalidation of signatures, the fraud committed by the opposition will be unveiled, that’s why they want to block this at all cost”, said Juan Barreto, a National Assembly deputy from the Movement for a Fifth Republic, Chavez’s political party.

From Green Left Weekly, March 31, 2004.
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