CARACAS: Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro late Tuesday taunted his political opponents after they hit an apparent roadblock in efforts to oust him from office.
Opposition leaders must hold a recall referendum by January 10 if they are to succeed not only in removing Maduro but in staging new elections to replace his administration.
The National Electoral Council (CNE) has approved the first of two petitions required to organize a referendum, which they aim to do by the end of this year.
However, the election officials said Tuesday that a decisive step in triggering a referendum -- the collection of four million signatures on a recall petition -- probably could not be completed in time.
Maduro vowed Tuesday that his political enemies -- whom he has accused of fomenting public disorder and widespread unrest -- would fail.
"The violent plans that you have will be defeated by the conscience of a majority of the people," he declared during his weekly television program, in remarks he addressed to the opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD).
"We're going to guarantee peace, independence, political sovereignty and the Bolivarian revolution" the Venezuelan president declared invoking the political movement founded by his late mentor and predecessor Hugo Chavez.
The electoral council's president Tibisay Lucena said Tuesday that the gathering of signatures for the second petition "would take place around the end of October" on condition that "all the regulatory requirements are fulfilled."
Lucena said in a speech to top officials that if the opposition gathered the four million signatures required to spark a referendum, the CNE would then have a month to verify them. After that, she said, the CNE would have up to three months to hold the referendum.
That appeared to make it unlikely a referendum would be held by January as the opposition MUD demands.
In keeping with the constitution, if Maduro loses a referendum held after January 10, he would just transfer power to his handpicked deputy.
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