Vzla: It's recall showtime!

London 31 May 2004 – The repair process has been successful for both parties, or so they believe. Only minutes after the ratification ended a jubilant Enrique Mendoza claimed victory announcing that more than enough signatures were repaired and the recall was a reality. Conversely, his rival for the governorship of Miranda state Diosdado Cabello from the “Commando Ayacucho” headquarters in the vice presidency’s office, declared that the opposition failed in its signature repairing attempt.

Meanwhile the political police DISIP and Freddy Bernal’s Policia de Caracas paid courtesy ‘visits’ to some offices of opposition parties where allegedly they ‘found’ large numbers of cloned IDs that were to be utilised by people in the repair process. This merits some thought. The names of those who were permitted to repair their signatures were written down in “cuadernos” or books prepared by the electoral body (CNE). Citizens whose signatures were to be repaired were meant to do so for the second time, that is to say their IDs were checked already by electoral authorities in November's signature collection drive. In other words the validity of those “cedulas” was verified by the screening mechanisms established by the CNE. It is therefore hard to believe that a massive cloning process took place for only those citizens whose signatures were deemed to be repaired could in fact take part in the repair process.