CARACAS: Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles vowed Thursday to take his challenge of this month's presidential vote to court and repeated his demand for a do-over of the contested election.
Capriles had demanded that Venezuela's National Electoral Board begin reviewing the balloting procedures for the April 14 election he narrowly lost.
He set a deadline of Thursday for the panel to begin its review in an ultimatum announced the night before.
When the election board failed to respond, Capriles announced he would resort to the court system to get a full recount or election re-do.
"The next step is the rejection of the election, with all the evidence that we've collected," he told Globovision television, vowing to take the case to the Supreme Judicial Tribunal.
He further upped the ante, insisting that he would only accept an election audit that examined voters' signatures and fingerprints.
Capriles lost the April 14 election to Nicolas Maduro, political heir to late president Hugo Chavez, who died last month. The margin of victory was just 1.8 percent, according to the National Electoral Board.
Capriles and his supporters claim voter fraud, alleging that some voters cast multiple ballots or even used ballots belonging to people who had died.
The election board, which has said that a full vote recount is legally impossible, agreed last week only to a partial review of ballots, which Capriles rejected as insufficient.
Political tensions soared on Wednesday when both the government and Capriles called massive street rallies for May 1.
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