Is the Venezuelan electoral authority, the CNE, not legitimate?
This is an interesting question. Lately, some in the opposition have been questioning the legitimacy the five member board that runs the CNE because of the way that it was named. By law, the CNE is to be appointed by a two thirds vote of the National Assembly (AN). However, in 2003 when a new CNE board needed to be appointed this proved not to be possible. The reason being that the AN was very deeply divided between pro and anti Chavez forces. Because neither side in the AN has a two thirds majority and because they couldn’t agree on who the five board members should be it proved impossible for the board to be appointed by the AN. And without this CNE board there could be no elections. To get around this the Venezuelan Supreme Court went ahead and named the board members themselves. This is problematic in that this is not how the CNE was to be named. However, no one complained, least of all the opposition, when it was done. The opposition was desperate to try to hold a recall referendu
