Venezuela's electoral council was set yesterday to rule on a drive to recall President Hugo Chavez amid violent protests by the president's supporters and a threat to use oil as a weapon if Washington tried to intervene.
"In the interests of preserving and maintaining peace in the country, we have decided to give the results of the decisions for the presidential recall referendum tomorrow," electoral council executive Jorge Rodriguez said Sunday.
Rodriguez said the council had postponed announcing preliminary results because it was checking petition signatures collected by Chavez opponents calling for a referendum.
PHOTO: AFP
Pro-Chavez demonstrators meanwhile set up roadblocks in poor neighborhoods, where the left-populist president has much of his support. Two people were shot to death at the barricades, state-run VTV television reported.
A motorcyclist was also shot in the head in a neighborhood opposed to Chavez's rule near the Caracas freeway where National Guard troops were positioned to stop opposition demonstrators from blocking the road, television reports said. Later in the day, two journalists were shot at during an anti-Chavez demonstration.
A photographer received a superficial injury to the chest, saved by a bulletproof vest, after a youth targeted him with a 9 mm weapon.
A Univision cameraman was shot in the exclusive Chacao district as opposition demonstrators attempting to set up a roadblock clashed with highway police. Another opposition protester was shot, as was a highway police officer, the Caracas fire chief said.
Opposition leaders say they collected 3.4 million signatures seeking the recall referendum. The constitution requires a minimum of 2.4 million valid signatures.
The government says that fraud was widespread in collecting the petitions.
But former US president Jimmy Carter, an electoral observer, said the electoral council guaranteed monitors access to the signature verification.
Carter and the Organization of American States brokered a deal last year between Chavez and the opposition to end attempts to oust Chavez through mass demonstrations and instead to use the constitutional provision allowing the president to be recalled at any time after the halfway point of the term.
Venezuela's constitution calls for a vote on a new president within 30 days if Chavez is ousted in a referendum. Chavez, whose term ends in 2006, has agreed to abide by the results of the vote.
At a rally, the president told some 60,000 cheering supporters that he would block US access to Venezuela's vast oil resources if Washington decides to move against his government.
In a three-hour anti-American diatribe that singled out US President George W. Bush as an illegitimate leader, Chavez said "if Mr. Bush is possessed with the madness of trying to blockade Venezuela, or worse for them, to invade Venezuela in response to the desperate song of his lackeys ... sadly not a drop of petroleum will come to them from Venezuela."
Chavez has long accused Washington of backing the opposition, which has tried to oust Chavez twice -- once in a nationwide strike that ended last year and in an aborted 2002 coup.
The US is keenly interested in stability in Venezuela, its fourth-largest oil supplier and and the only Latin American member of the Organization of Oil Producing Countries.
US interest in Caribbean stability peaked this week as an armed rebellion led to the resignation Sunday of Haitian president Jean Bertrand Aristide.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
RSS