Nearly 2 million sign on for Maduro recall

CARACAS: Venezuela's opposition presented reams of signatures to election authorities Monday calling for a referendum to remove President Nicolas Maduro, whom it blames for the country's crushing economic crisis.
Venezuelans fed up with food shortages, soaring inflation and now a paralysing electricity crunch have flocked to sign a petition for a recall referendum, according to the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).
It said it had presented 1.85 million signatures – more than nine times the number needed to launch the referendum process – to the National Electoral Board.
MUD executive secretary Jesus Torrealba said 80 boxes packed with referendum petitions had been delivered to the board.
However, board official Tania D'Amelio suggested Sunday on Twitter that the authorities might not start verifying the signatures until late May.
That drew opposition cries of bias in favour of Maduro and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
"There's no doubt about it ... Tania D'Amelio is a supporter and unconditional activist of the PSUV and is working to prevent a recall referendum this year," said Henry Ramos Allup, the speaker of the opposition-controlled legislature.
Opponents are racing to hold a recall referendum before the end of the year.
Under Venezuela's constitution, after January 2017 a successful recall vote would transfer power to Maduro's vice president rather than trigger new elections.
The constitution gives the authorities five days to count the signatures collected by the opposition and five days to verify them.
But D'Amelio indicated that process would begin only once the full 30 days allotted for circulating the petition had lapsed.
The opposition insists there is no need to wait until the end of the 30-day period because it already surpassed the required 200,000 signatures "in record time."
If the electoral board accepts the signatures as valid – far from a sure bet – the opposition will then have to collect four million more for the board to organize the vote.
"We'll achieve that in record time, too," said Torrealba.
"The referendum is ours, and it's the way to achieve the political change the country needs to escape this situation," said opposition leader Henrique Capriles, MUD's presidential candidate in 2013.

Beer dispute
Adding to Venezuela's woes, Maduro's government has taken a series of drastic measures to deal with the electricity crisis: four-hour daily blackouts across most of the country, a two-day public-sector workweek and school closures on Fridays.
The power cuts sparked riots and looting last week in Venezuela's second-largest city, Maracaibo.
On Sunday the country also set its clocks forward half an hour to curb evening electricity demand.
In yet another piece of bad news, the country's largest beer-maker, Polar, stopped production at four breweries Saturday because it says it has run out of barley.
Maduro on Sunday ordered the state takeover of any companies that halt production over what he insists are trumped-up shortages invented by wealthy elites plotting against him.
Inspectors from the labour ministry and the "fair pricing superintendency" visited two Polar breweries and several distribution centres Monday, escorted by soldiers, a source at the company told AFP.
Once-booming Venezuela, which has the world's largest proven oil reserves, has plunged into economic chaos as global crude prices have collapsed.
The import-dependent country faces acute shortages of food and basic goods like toilet paper due to a lack of foreign currency, more than 96 percent of which it gets from oil sales.
The economy, which has been in recession since 2013, shrank 5.7% last year. The government said inflation came in at more than 180% last year.
Analysts estimate the actual inflation rate is much higher. The International Monetary Fund forecasts it will hit 700% this year.
A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of Venezuelans want Maduro, elected president by a razor-thin margin in 2013, to leave office.
He however has vowed to press on with the socialist "revolution" launched in 1999 by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez.
Concerned over the mounting tension, Pope Francis has sent Maduro a "personal letter," Vatican sources said.
They did not reveal its contents, but said the pope is "closely following the situation in Venezuela." — AFP