VENEZUELA: Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have prepared a parallel monitoring system to ensure that next month's referendum will not be manipulated, a top opposition leader said yesterday.
Mr Enrique Mendoza, the governor of Miranda state, said the measures would safeguard the August 15th vote against meddling by the National Electoral Council that he described as "kidnapped" by officials sympathetic to the leftist leader.
"We have created a system, which for security reasons we cannot talk about, that will let us to know every minute or minute and half, everything that is going on in all the voting centres," Mendoza said. "The government will not be able to commit any fraud without all Venezuelans and the world seeing it clearly. It is a system that will let us know who won and who lost."
Less than three weeks before the vote, Mendoza's comments could inflame tensions with the government which has accused the opposition of undermining the electoral council's authority and refusing to promise to accept the referendum results.
The vote on whether the president should step down pits the populist ex-army officer against a coalition that have fought a bitter dispute with him for two years.
Chavez says most Venezuelans support his reforms to ease poverty in the country. But his critics argue his self-styled revolution has pitched the country into a political and economic crisis.