6. On August 21, 2013, the Commission notified the admissibility report to the parties. Also, in accordance with Article 38.2 of its Rules, the Commission made itself available to the parties to reach a friendly settlement and asked the petitioners to submit additional observations on the merits within four months. On January 30, 2015, the petitioners submitted their observations on the merits. These observations were forwarded to the Venezuelan State on March 31, 2015 requesting to submit any additional observations on the merits within the statutory period of four months. At the date of approval of this report, the Venezuelan State has not submitted its additional observations on the merits. III. POSITION OF THE PARTIES A. Position of the petitioners 7. During the merits stage the petitioners ratified in all its parts the content of their initial complaint of March 7, 2006. In this regard, they noted that the alleged victims Rocío San Miguel Sosa, Magally Chang Girón, and Thais Coromoto Peña worked at the CNF, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. They noted that: i) Thais Coromoto Peña had worked at the service of the Public Administration for 20 years, nine of them working for the CNF; ii) Rocío San Miguel Sosa had done so for a total of 13 years, seven of which he served in the CNF; and iii) Magally Chang Girón, on its part, had worked six years at the service of the CNF. 8. The petitioners reported that in March 2004, Rocío San Miguel Sosa, Magally Chang Girón, and Thais Coromoto Peña were informed of the decision of the President of the National Border Council to terminate their employment contract with that institution. In their view, that decision was based on "purely political reasons" linked to the decision of the alleged victims to sign the petition to carry out the recall referendum on the term of office of the President of the Republic, under Article 72 of the Constitution of that country. 9. By way of background, the petitioners indicated that, in August 2002, several organizations submitted a list of signatures to the National Electoral Council (hereinafter "the CNE" for its initials in Spanish) requesting to carry out an advisory referendum to achieve the resignation of the President of the Republic. On December 3, 2002, the referendum on the presidential term was convened, however afterwards the Acting Chamber for Electoral Matters of the Supreme Court of Justice called off the above-mentioned referendum process until the National Assembly appointed new members to the CNE. In February 2003 a new gathering of signatures got underway popularly known as “El Firmazo”, presenting on August 20, 2003 more than 3 million signatures before the CNE. However, on this occasion the CNE found the petition inadmissible because it had been filed tardily and established over thirty technical conditions to carry out the referendum. 10. Finally, the CNE convened and organized a new period for collection of signatures, which ran from November 28 to December 1, 2003, and that was popularly known as “El reafirmazo”. The petitioners contended that in the weeks prior to this signature collection drive, both the President of the Republic and other high-ranking government officials made threatening public statements to intimidate citizens into not participating in the signature collection process. 11. On December 2, 2003, the Ministry of Infrastructure reported to the country that the signatures gathered during “El Reafirmazo” would be posted at the collection centers so that all Venezuelans could verify them. They added that the signatures collected were submitted to the CNE on December 19, 2003 for validation. 12. The petitioners underscored that on January 30, 2004, prior to the CNE validating the signatures turned over to it, the President of the Republic filed a request with the CNE to hand over to congressman Luis Tascón a copy of the original signature sheets of all persons signing the petition, who after obtaining them published them on its website along with allegations of fraud of the signatories. They asserted that on February 15, 2004, on the Sunday television program of the President of the Republic, he urged the consult the “Tascón List”, indicating the Web site where people could view who had signed the petition to remove him from office. The petitioners alleged that the Web featured a built-in signature browser function 2