A drive to hold a recall referendum on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has been halted, Venezuela's National Electoral Council announced in a statement.
Federal courts ruled Thursday that multiple cases of voter identity fraud occurred over the summer as the first round of signatures was being gathered to request the referendum.
As a result, the electoral council
stopped the second round of signature-gathering scheduled to take place
October 26-28. If 20% of the voting population had signed petitions
during that time, a recall election could have been ordered.
Opposition
leader Henrique Capriles said Friday, "Yesterday in Venezuela there was
a coup d'état. There is no other way to call it. What we feared so much
was hatched."
"The time has come
to defend Venezuela's constitution," he said at a news conference,
adding that "next Wednesday, we're going to take Venezuela from end to
end." He didn't specify what might happen beyond protests.
The
opposition coalition, Unidad Venezuela, tweeted of upcoming protests on
October 26, saying it these will not be "like anything other march."
Another tweet said: "Yesterday the Government staged a coup to all
Venezuelans, that decision deepened the crisis in the country."
Maduro, heir to the late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, has vowed that efforts to remove him from office won't succeed.
The country is battling an economic crisis, with many citizens lacking access to enough food and basic health care.
Protests
over the government have been raging for months, culminating in the
recall effort. Many people are fed up with the widespread shortages of
basic goods and medical supplies, factory shutdowns and blackouts.
Opposition
groups collected signatures of 1% of the voting population during the
first petition drive last summer. That was enough to trigger the second
round.
Even as she announced the
results of the first round, Venezuela's top election official called for
an investigation into irregularities in the list of signatures, saying
were at least 1,326 instances of voter identity fraud.