Venezuela top court suspends referendum on Chavez

www.forbes.com Reuters, 01.22.03, 2:38 PM ET

CARACAS, Venezuela (Reuters) - Venezuela's Supreme Court Wednesday ordered the suspension of a planned February nonbinding referendum on the rule of President Hugo Chavez, dealing a blow to opposition hopes to inflict a symbolic political defeat on the leftist leader.

Electoral authorities had set the referendum for Feb. 2, after the opposition had collected more than 2 million signatures to request the poll, which would have asked voters whether or not the populist president should resign.

But Chavez's government, which is battling a seven-week opposition strike, objected to the vote as unconstitutional and appealed to the Supreme Court to stop it from going ahead.

"This means that the referendum is frozen,' Romulo Rangel of the country's National Electoral Council, the official electoral authority, told reporters.

Chavez, who was voted into office in 1998 and is refusing opposition calls to step down and hold early elections, had said he would ignore the result of the nonbinding referendum, even if he lost by 90 percent.

A defeat in the poll would not have legally obliged Chavez to resign, but the opposition had been hoping it would show they could beat him in a vote.

Chavez has said they should wait until Aug. 19, halfway through his term, when the constitution allows for a binding referendum on his current mandate, which is scheduled to last until early 2007.