Robyn Marshall, Caracas
Jorge Rodriguez, one of the five members of Venezuela's National Elections Council (CNE), announced on April 14 that the re-verification of signatures on the right-wing opposition's petition for a referendum to recall left-wing President Hugo Chavez will take place from May 21 to 23.
On March 2, the CNE announced that not enough valid signatures had been submitted to it on December 19 to force a recall referendum. After finishing the counting and validation of signatures submitted, the CNE found that only 1,832,493 signatures were valid — about 640,500 short of the 20% of voters constitutionally required to force a presidential recall referendum.
After negotiations with the US-backed, pro-capitalist opposition, the CNE agreed to open 2700 centres around the country for 1,109,000 voters to reconfirm their signatures.
Chavez's political support — as reflected in recent polls conducted polling organisations controlled by supporters of the opposition — has increased from 35% to almost 45% of voters.
A major reason for the growing support for Chavez has been the rapid recovery of the country's economy after the bosses' lock of the state-owned oil industry in December. The lock-out and other acts of economic sabotage by the capitalists caused Venezuela's economy to contract by 9% in 2003.
However, on April 1, Central Bank director Armando Leon announced that the country's GDP will grow by above 10% in the first trimester of 2004. The Venezuelan government and independent economic experts had expected the economy to grow by about 6.5%.
Elias Eljuri Abraham, president of the National Institute of Statistics, told reporters that exports have grown by 48% in the first trimester of 2004 compared with the same period in 2003.
Imports have fell by 2.9% in the same period, largely due to currency exchange controls implemented since last year to curb capital flight after the oil industry lock-out. The lock-out was broken by the government mobilising oil production workers to takeover the running of the industry from its capitalist managers.
Leon said that the sectors of the economy that have grown at a faster pace are those related to energy and petroleum. He also revealed that Venezuela's foreign currency reserves had reached US$23 billion, which had prompted international analysts at Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and Fitch Ratings, to assert that Venezuela's capacity to serve its foreign debt remains very strong.
From Green Left Weekly, April 21, 2004.
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