Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro ordered the firing of top Venezuelan bureaucrats within 48 hours for signing a petition calling for a presidential recall election.
Maduro gave the command through a spokesman Monday, saying anyone with a management-level post in five government ministries who signed the petition must be fired within two days.
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Jorge Rodriguez stated Maduro, “cannot have people that are against the Revolution and the president in management positions in ministries, public institutions, local government and municipalities.”
The president’s orders come as the democratic opposition and the international community pressures the government to go ahead with the recall process as soon as possible.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) approved the first step of the recall process on August 1, by validating one percent of voters’ signatures submitted in the petition. The CNE will now give the opposition three days in late October to collect the signatures of at least 20 percent of voters, which is approximately 4 million people.
There will be a recall election if the opposition gets the needed signatures.
In order to oust him, opponents will need to collect more signatures than the number Maduro got for his election in April 2013 — over 7,587,579 signatures.
Even if Maduro is successfully removed from office through the ballot box, it may not matter depending on when the vote takes place.
If the vote takes place before January 10, this brings about new elections where the opposition can run a candidate for the highest office. After that date, though, Maduro would simply step down and his fellow socialist vice president would take over until 2019, when Maduro’s term would have ended.
Venezuela has been in a state of economic desperation for years, particularly since the March 2013 death of strongman Hugo Chavez. The Latin American oil exporter has shortages of all sorts of goods, as its economy has been run into the ground by low oil prices and excessive government spending. Many Venezuelans are even eating out of trash cans because there isn’t enough food to go around.
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