Venezuela top court blocks opposition bid to oust Maduro

The Venezuelan Supreme Court has blocked yet another opposition bid to unseat President Nicolas Maduro before his tenure officially comes to an end in 2019.

The top court ruled on Monday that any constitutional amendment to reduce the six-year presidential term “cannot take effect retroactively or be applied immediately.”

The court said in the ruling that “trying to use a constitutional amendment to cut short immediately a term of office of someone popularly elected, such as the president of the republic, is an act of fraud against the constitution.”

Such an amendment would be constitutional if approved by a referendum but could not be applied to Maduro’s term, according to the ruling.

However, the opposition leader in the legislature, Henry Ramos Allup, dismissed that the amendment was unconstitutional, criticizing the court for vetoing the legislation before it goes through a second reading.

“You are the ones committing constitutional fraud,’ he wrote on Twitter, denouncing the Supreme Court judges as “outlaws.”

The opposition which swept two thirds of the seats in the Venezuelan legislature in 2015 has vowed to oust the president. It has tried to call a direct referendum on whether to remove Maduro from office.

The president, however, has successfully blocked previous bills against him in the National Assembly by appealing to the Supreme Court.

Following the court ruling, the opposition called for a rally on Wednesday toward the National Electoral Council in Caracas to demand paperwork as the first step toward the nearly 4 million signatures needed to trigger a recall referendum.

“The recall referendum has to be this year. If it’s not this year, there’s no point,” said opposition leader Henrique Capriles.

“It’s incredible that with so many problems in this country, we have to march to get a form ... We’ve been asking for two months,” he added.

If the president loses the referendum, there would be a new presidential election this year, a vote which gives the opposition a chance to take over the government.

Since 2014, Venezuela has been grappling with protests against Maduro who is under fire by his critics, most notably the opposition, for causing the economic recession through mismanagement.

The government of Maduro, however, has denounced the opposition’s plans as a US-backed attempt to bring about a coup d’état in the oil-rich country that is home to 29 million people.

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