Chavez hailed by 10 Latin countries

Former US president Jimmy Carter and other international election monitors pledged to go the extra mile to dispel opposition claims that a failed Venezuelan referendum that sought to oust President Hugo Chavez was rigged, and to prevent further political upheaval.

Today, they will be witnesses as local election officials check a random sampling of results from 150 voting stations – a rare follow-up move to an election they have already said looked clean.

“We have no reason to doubt the integrity of the electoral process nor the accuracy of the referendum results,” Carter asserted at a news conference yesterday.

The leaders of 10 Latin American countries issued a joint statement calling the vote clean and peaceful and congratulating Chavez for his “democratic victory”.

Carter and Cesar Gaviria, the head of the Organisation of American States, have been working for two years to find a solution to the often bloody political crisis that has gripped Venezuela, the world’s fifth-largest oil exporting nation.

The referendum was carried out on touch-screen voting machines, which produced a paper receipt of each vote, much like an ATM. Voters then deposited the receipts into a ballot box.

Amid charges that the electronic machines were rigged, the monitors will be checking the results from the machines against the paper ballots to make sure there are no major discrepancies.

The paper ballots will be checked at election offices while votes recorded in the machines will be examined at an army base.

Carter made it clear that the opposition won’t have a leg to stand on if they keep crying foul after the audit, which he said should be completed by tomorrow.

“It should be sufficient to address the remaining concerns that have been expressed by the opposition,” Carter said at the nationally broadcast news conference.

In Washington, the US State Department said the referendum should end Venezuela’s political crisis.

“The people of Venezuela have spoken,” spokesman Adam Ereli said. It was a conciliatory comment from the US government, which often has harsh words for Chavez, a blunt critic of US foreign policy.

Strengthened by his victory, Chavez is now setting his sights on centralising power, including exerting control over the courts, local police and the nation’s broadcast stations.

This has increased concerns among some critics that he intends to install a Cuban-style dictatorship, even though elections and the referendum held since he was swept to power in a 1998 have been clear and fair.