President Maduro: Opposition’s Popular Consultation is Not Legally Binding
Venezuelan President, Nicolás Maduro, assured this Thursday that the popular consultation of the opposition that started this Monday, December 7 and ends on Saturday, December 12, with which they seek to validate their support by the population, through the internet, does not have a legal framework.
“These are queries that are made to measure and pulse public opinion, these queries are taken as guides, no queries on the internet have legal or constitutional status,” said the head of state.
“It’s like if we used the internet, as we always do, using the Patria system, with 20.5 million Venezuelans who have the ‘Carnet de la Patria’ (national identification card) and we measured public opinion. But no one would think that… an internet survey has constitutional or legal value. It only has an informative value, as a guide for action,” said the president from a meeting with the elected deputies to the National Assembly from Caracas.
In the Venezuelan constitution there is a legal option, the Referendum, that can be called by a group of citizens or political parties on matters relevant to the whole population. Guaidó and the political parties within the G4 did not follow the constitutional path to exercise that option.
The opposition called for the consultation through the Voatz app, available in Google Store, after the electoral result of December 6, where the Great Patriotic Simón Bolívar Pole (PSUV/GPP) won 253 seats and the opposition only consolidated 21 positions out of a total of 277 of national, regional and nominal lists, according to the latest data from the National Electoral Council (CNE).
Featured image: Venezuelan President Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. Photo courtesy of Prensa Presidencial.
Translation: OT/JRE/SL
