Venezuela's electoral authority has rejected as invalid an opposition petition requesting a national referendum on the rule of left-wing President Hugo Chavez.
"The National Electoral Council ...declares inadmissible the petition for a referendum presented Aug. 20," council president Francisco Carrasquero told reporters.
He cited a series of procedural errors in denying the petition backed by more than three million signatures collected in early February and presented in August.
The rejection was a blow to opposition hopes to try to vote the populist president out of office this year in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.
Opposition leaders have already said they will make a second nationwide collection of signatures to seek a referendum.
The decision was likely to re-ignite political tensions in the oil-rich South American nation, which has been shaken for more than a year by fierce political feuding over the rule of Chavez, a former paratrooper who was elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2000.
Before the electoral body announced its decision, several thousand Chavez supporters carrying banners reading "No Referendum with Dud Signatures," staged a protest near the National Electoral Council in downtown Caracas.Dozens of National Guard troops in riot gear ringed the building.
Chavez, who himself led a botched coup six years beforewinning a landslide election in 1998, is resisting thereferendum challenge.
Leading a noisy campaign by his supporters against thevote, he had argued that the opposition signatures were riddledwith forgeries.
They were collected Feb. 2 at the end of agrueling two-month opposition general strike that the presidentsaid was aimed at toppling him unlawfully.
Pilloried by his foes as an authoritarian ruler trying to mimic Cuba's communist president, Fidel Castro, Chavez survived a brief military coup last year. He dismisses his foes as rich "oligarchs" who oppose his self-styled "revolution" because itthreatens their wealth and privileges.
Rejecting the referendum petition, the electoral council cited the delay of more than six months between the collection of the signatures in February and their presentation.
It also identified legal flaws in the petition itself.