Home > Chavez Accepts Referendum on His Rule
By Pascal Fletcher
CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Thursday won the chance to try to vote him out through a referendum and the left-wing leader said he accepted the challenge.
The populist president faces a recall poll, probably in August, after electoral authorities said initial figures showed the opposition had collected enough valid signatures to trigger the referendum in the world’s No. 5 oil exporter.
Opposition leaders called the result a major victory in their campaign to try to vote Chavez out of the presidency, after more than two years of often violent political feuding.
"Despite all of the obstacles put in our way ... we made it," Enrique Mendoza of the opposition Democratic Coordinator coalition said. He called on electoral authorities to maintain a previously suggested Aug. 8 referendum date.
Jubilant opposition supporters took to the streets, honking car horns and waving national flags. "I’m sure we’re going to get Chavez out," bank executive Marina Fleitas said.
But thousands of Chavez supporters gathered outside Miraflores palace to hear the president accept the referendum challenge in a national broadcast and predict victory for himself.
"Let’s go to the battle then," Chavez said, wearing a dark suit and standing beside an image of the crucified Christ.
His supporters chanted: "Hey, hey, Chavez’s here to stay."
Preliminary results announced by the National Electoral Council after a weekend of signature checks showed the opposition had so far obtained 2.45 million valid signatures, more than the 2.44 million required to trigger the poll.
Definitive results were due to be announced later but Chavez said they would almost certainly confirm a referendum.
He said his acceptance of the recall mechanism enshrined in Venezuela’s 1999 constitution, which he helped to draft, showed he was not the dictator his critics made him out to be.
The president, a firebrand nationalist elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000 for a second six-year term, addressed his defiance to President Bush, whom he said was backing opposition efforts to oust him.
"I’m telling him I accept the challenge," he said.
The United States, Venezuela’s biggest oil client, has criticized Chavez for allying himself with Cuba’s Communist President Fidel Castro, but it denies trying to topple him.
Washington welcomed the referendum announcement.
The long-awaited decision came shortly after armed pro-government supporters torched several vehicles in downtown Caracas and fired at the anti-Chavez city mayor’s office in an apparent protest against the recall vote, police said.
At least one police officer was hurt.
Chavez, a former paratrooper who won elections six years after failing to seize power in a 1992 coup, has repeatedly condemned the referendum petition as riddled with fraud.
His opponents have accused him of manipulating electoral officials and judges in a bid to block a referendum.
Most past opinion polls have shown the president losing a referendum, but he dismisses these as biased and has stepped up spending on populist social projects.
Chavez survived a brief coup in 2002. He condemns his enemies as wealthy, U.S.-backed elites trying to overthrow his self-styled "revolution" he says seeks to help the poor. (Additional reporting by Silene Ramirez)