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Venezuela's right-wing opposition announced on Thursday a series of demonstrations to protest the National Electoral Council's schedule for collecting the signatures needed to begin a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro.
The council, or CNE, said on Wednesday night that signatures will be collected between Oct. 26 through Oct. 28. However, that would almost certainly rule out the possibility of a referendum held before Jan. 10, 2017, which means that even if the opposition was successful in recalling Maduro, his vice president would serve for the remainder of his term.
The opposition, or Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), wants an earlier vote to put its own candidate in office.
"What is coming is a national day of mobilization, a peaceful mass protest, but forceful in defense of the Constitution (...) these gentlemen are going to find a country on a war footing," said MUD chief Jesus Torrealba at his radio show on Radio Caracas Radio.
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Opponents must collect 4 million signatures in three days to trigger a referendum. They tried to do so in May when they collected signatures from 1 percent of registered voters to satisfy the first step in the process. However, the CNE found that 605,727 of the submitted signatures were invalid due to widespread irregularities, including signatures from ineligible minors and deceased or non-existent persons.
Under the Venezuelan constitution, a recall referendum must be held this year for new presidential elections to be triggered. However, the right-wing opposition has not yet submitted the necessary requirements and based on previous experiences, the process may take several months from beginning to end.
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