Venezuela Electoral Council Suspends Presidential Recall Bid

CARACAS, Venezuela—Electoral officials suspended a recall referendum campaign that opposition parties were mounting against President Nicolá s Maduro, making it increasingly unlikely the president's foes will be able to remove the embattled leader from power.

The National Electoral Council, staffed with close allies of Mr. Maduro, said in a statement Thursday night it was truncating an opposition signature drive after four provincial courts called it fraudulent and issued rulings putting a halt to the effort. Four ruling party governors, alleging fraud but presenting no public evidence, had requested injunctions from the courts earlier Thursday.

"There won't be a referendum, and with the support of the constitution, we won't allow them to try to cheat our people again," one of the governors, Francisco Rangel, said in a Twitter posting.

The ruling represents a dark moment for an opposition movement that started the year buoyant, with a supermajority in congress and what its leaders thought was the political capital to end 17 years of socialist rule that left a once prosperous country struggling to feed its own people. But while Mr. Maduro's popularity has continued to fall, he has handed over more power to the military while the courts neutralized the congress and blocked opposition plans to overhaul the economic model. Now, it increasingly appears that Mr. Maduro will finish out his term in 2019, even as the economy continues its collapse.

The developments came days after the electoral council announced it was postponing elections in December for governors, saying they would instead take place later in 2017. Polls have shown the opposition would easily remove Mr. Maduro in a recall and take most of Venezuela's governorships and mayors' seats, which are also up for grabs next year.

"This only shows the regime's deep fear of losing power, just as they already lost the popular support," an opposition party, Popular Will, said after the ruling. The party, whose leader has been jailed since 2014, has called on Venezuelans to take to the street to demand the vote.

The opposition contends the electoral council has blocked every effort to stage a referendum, which is permitted in the constitution. The government's adversaries say the council delayed the process, coming up with complex steps that weren't in electoral regulations and had not been required before. The Supreme Court, staffed by magistrates close to the government, upheld the council's rulings.

Last month, the council ruled that a recall couldn't take place this year, which extinguished the opposition's goal of ending socialist rule. Had a recall been staged successfully this year, Mr. Maduro would have been removed from power, triggering national elections that polls show the opposition would have won.

Since last month's ruling, Mr. Maduro's opponents were instead hoping for an election next year. Under that scenario, Mr. Maduro could be removed, though his vice president would replace him and finish out his term.

The opposition was gearing up for a national petition drive for next Wednesday to gather signatures from 20% of all registered voters to trigger the referendum for 2017.

Constitutional lawyer Jose Vicente Haro said local criminal courts have no say over national electoral matters. "This decision is unconstitutional," he said.

The rulings on Thursday leading to the electoral council's decision were unexpected. They were made by criminal court judges, and were issued just hours after the governors sought the injunctions. Those governors alleged that a few thousand signatures collected by the opposition earlier this year in an initial stage of the referendum were fraudulent, even though the opposition had collected almost 10 times the required number.

The country's powerful ruling party vice president, Diosdado Cabello, went even further, saying that opposition leaders should be jailed.

"We hope that those responsible [for fraud] will be found, will be detained and will go to prison for what they have done," he said.

The suspension caps the steady radicalization of Mr. Maduro's government, which is dealing with an economic meltdown characterized by hyperinflation and widespread food and medicine shortages. Mr. Maduro and the Supreme Court have, for instance, taken away all of the powers of the National Assembly, which has been in the hands of the opposition since January. Last week, for the first time since the 1860s, Mr. Maduro approved his own budget, without congressional debate.

Write to Anatoly Kurmanaev at Anatoly.kurmanaev@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 21, 2016 01:35 ET (05:35 GMT)

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