Venezuelan authorities will conduct a random audit of the recall referendum, former US president Jimmy Carter announced on Tuesday, adding that he had no reason to doubt the vote won by President Hugo Chavez.
Carter said he and the Organization of American States (OAS) had suggested the move in order to ease concerns voiced by the opposition.
Carter, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said the electoral authorities agreed to conduct the random audit of 150 voting desks yesterday, monitored by officials of the government, the opposition and international observers.
"The results of this second audit should be sufficient to address the remaining concerns that have been expressed by the opposition," Carter said.
Opposition leaders have denounced as a "massive fraud" the official outcome of the referendum which has Chavez garnering 58 percent of the ballots. The opposition had pushed for the vote hoping it could revoke the president's mandate.
But Carter, who had already endorsed the outcome, reiterated on Tuesday he had "no reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process or the accuracy of the referendum itself."
Carter and other international election monitors pledged to go the extra mile to dispel opposition claims that the referendum was rigged, and to prevent further political upheaval.
Carter and Cesar Gaviria, the head of the OAS, have been working for two years to find a solution to the often bloody political crisis that has gripped Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporting nation. Carter and Gaviria on Monday endorsed results of Sunday's referendum, in which voters by almost 58 percent voted to keep the leftist firebrand in office.
Leaders of an opposition coalition immediately cried fraud and called for mass demonstrations. Gunmen fired on an opposition demonstration later Monday, injuring six people and mortally wounding a woman who died in a hospital on Tuesday. Dozens died in a failed coup against Chavez in April 2002, and in political riots over several years.
Not willing to simply pack up and go home after giving their blessing to how the referendum was handled, Carter and Gaviria decided they needed to stick around.
Yesterday, they and members of the OAS and the Carter Center staff were to watch, along with representatives of the opposition, as national election officials compare electronic and paper ballots.
The referendum was carried out on touch-screen voting machines, which produced a paper receipt of each vote, much like an ATM. Voters then deposited the receipts into a ballot box.
Amid charges that the electronic machines were rigged, the monitors will be checking the results from the machines against the paper ballots to make sure there are no major discrepancies.
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS