CARACAS: Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro said Thursday they had gathered more than triple the number of signatures needed from crisis-weary Venezuelans to begin organizing a referendum to remove him from power.
Fed up with a punishing recession and an electricity crisis that has led to rolling blackouts, Venezuelans lined up Wednesday to sign a petition for a recall referendum against the socialist president.
Enrique Marquez, the deputy speaker of the opposition-controlled legislature, said more than 600,000 people had signed the petition -- more than triple the number required to proceed to the next stage of the process.
"It's an extremely high number given that the National Electoral Board only requires a little under 200,000" signatures, he told journalists.
He said the signatures would be handed over to the electoral board early next week for verification. Signatories will have to present themselves to validate their endorsement, Marquez said.
Once this initial batch of signatures is verified, the opposition has to collect around four million more for the electoral board to call a referendum.
The opposition is racing against the clock to organize the referendum by the end of the year, when a successful recall vote would trigger new elections rather than transfer power to Maduro's Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz.
Maduro, the political heir to late leftist firebrand Hugo Chavez, is under growing pressure from the center-right opposition, which took control of the legislature in January after winning a landslide election victory.
Once a booming oil giant, Venezuela has descended into economic chaos in tandem with the collapse in global crude prices, threatening Maduro and the "revolution" launched by Chavez in 1999.
Exacerbating the situation, an electricity shortage has now forced Maduro to slash the workweek to two days for government employees, close schools on Fridays and ration power for four hours a day in much of the country.
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