CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 16 - Venezuelans voted overwhelmingly to keep President Hugo Chávez in power, electoral authorities and international monitors said Monday. But a strident opposition movement refused to accept the results of the recall referendum, raising prospects for more turmoil in Venezuela, the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.
With 95 percent of ballots counted, Francisco Carrasquero, the president of the National Electoral Council, announced early Monday that Mr. Chávez had the backing of 58 percent of the voters, against 42 percent for the opposition. Mr. Chávez drew nearly 5 million votes, while the opposition collected about 3.6 million.
As of Monday night, opposition leaders had not backed off from their charges that a "gigantic fraud" had occurred. Anti-government protesters threw stones at a group of pro-government demonstrators, who witnesses said pulled out guns and fired shots that killed a 62-year-old woman and wounded several others.
But the Organization of American States and the Carter Center of Atlanta - monitors invited by the government and the opposition to validate the outcome - said the results were legitimate.
I would like to see more confirmation on the "shooting" thing here- there has been alot of right-wing propaganda here-from people opposed to democracy.
Which of course, correlates with what Republicans are doing in Florida.
I have a simple solution for voting fraud: make its penalties Federal penalties identical to those of espionage.
50 years of hard time for messing with voting machines.
1 comment:
What is USA without cheap oil?
A bunch of ill-informed city-dwellers with lots of hand-guns and no common sense?
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