In Rush to Meet Chavez Schedule, Venezuela Electoral Authority Blocks New Voters From Registering

Venezuela's National Electoral Council (CNE) has ruled that the electoral register approved on December 11 is to be used at the proposed referendum on President Hugo Chávez' plan to reform the constitution by removing a ban on successive re-election.

The five directors on the CNE board had been asked by one of their number, Vicente Díaz, to keep the register open so that young people coming of age (18 in Venezuela) could enlist on the register in time for the referendum. Chávez says he wants the vote to be held on February 15. Otherwise, Díaz and others argued, these new voters would in effect be barred from exercising their rights in a referendum whose purpose would be constitutional in nature.

The other four CNE directors, who are considered to be Chavez aligned, said there wasn't time for new voters to put their names down and keep the register in order during the run-up to the referendum. Past CNE directors, far from being impartial, have gone on to take up key posts in Chavez political party and government.

At first, it seemed that Díaz might win his point when a fellow director conceded that there might be time after all. However, when it came to a vote on Thursday, the board voted four-to-one in favor of closing the register as of December 11 last year. Díaz was the single vote against.

Afterwards, he argued that up to 30,000 young Venezuelans became eligible to vote every month. Student activists claimed the CNE was in effect disenfranchising as many as 400,000 young people from taking part in the referendum. Student leaders played an active role in the campaign against Chávez' last attempt, in December 2007, to change the constitution so that he could run for re-election when his current, second term expires in 2012.

"Article 64 of the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela says that any citizen eighteen years of age has the right to vote," says Miguel Octavio, who follows these matters as head of research at leading Venezuelan investment bank BBO. "This has always been interpreted as anyone who is 18 on the date of the vote, can register to vote and will vote in that election. Not doing this violates their rights."

In his first electoral reverse since first being voted into power in late 1998, Chávez lost a referendum on a host of constitutional reforms including removal of the ban on repeated re-election in December 2007. Chávez' second attempt to reform the constitution has been approved by the National Assembly at a first debate, and is scheduled to go to a second debate on January 15.

Given that the chamber is all but entirely dominated by Chávez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the proposal is expected to sail through. From then on, the CNE will have 30 days in which to organize and hold the referendum.