Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro rejects calls for early election

CARACAS, Venezuela, Nov. 14 (UPI) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has rejected calls to hold early elections despite opposition efforts to remove him from power.

Maduro made the comments Sunday during his weekly television program in reference to the Democratic Unity Roundtable opposition coalition’s efforts to remove him — at first through a recall referendum, which was suspended.

After Venezuela’s high court, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice, stalled the recall referendum efforts, opposition politicians began calling for early elections, which Maduro dismissed.

“Nobody should get obsessed with electoral processes that are not in the constitution,” Maduro said. “An electoral way out? Way out to where?”

Venezuela’s elections are scheduled for December 2018. Maduro’s term ends early 2019.

Maduro’s regime and the opposition this month held a first phase of dialogue mediated by the Vatican seeking to end Venezuela’s political crisis.

The next round of talks are scheduled to begin Dec. 6. The opposition has vowed to return to holding protests, which were paused in efforts to facilitate negotiations.

“We have to return immediately to the agenda of popular mobilization in the whole country! It is a task for us all. The crisis every day is worse,” Henrique Capriles Radonski, a former presidential candidate and opposition governor of Venezuela’s Miranda state, said in a statement.

An economic crisis in Venezuela has led to shortages of basic goods. Maduro’s regime and the opposition blame each other for exacerbating the crisis, which has led to a political crisis in which the opposition-controlled National Assembly’s powers have been reduced by high court rulings accused of favoring Maduro.