The grasping socialist government of Venezuela is doing what grasping socialist governments do when things get desperate: accusing the opposition of crimes. Yahoo News reports Nicolas Maduro’s government is actually moving to have the entire opposition party banned because of alleged voter fraud:

The Venezuelan government asked electoral authorities Tuesday to ban the opposition coalition seeking to oust President Nicolas Maduro in a recall vote, accusing them of massive fraud.

Ratcheting up the tension in a country pushed to the brink of collapse by an economic crisis, Maduro’s camp hit back with a vengeance on the same day the opposition was hoping to get a green light to go ahead with its bid to hold a recall referendum.

“We have just asked for the cancellation of the registration of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), for being involved in the worst vote fraud in the country’s history,” said Jorge Rodriguez, Maduro’s designated aide to monitor the recall process.

The opposition party has been trying to get the government to approve a referendum on removing Maduro, something which is allowed under the country’s constitution. The first step in that process was collecting enough signatures to start the referendum process. Only 200,000 signatures were required for that initial step and, back in May, the opposition party turned in 1.8 million signatures, way more than what was required.

Yahoo News reports the socialists in power are now claiming to have found 11,000 signatures which they claim belong to dead people, children or convicts. The opposition disputes this but even if it’s true what about the other 1,789,000 signatures? Are all of those invalid too? Based on a claim to have invalidated a tiny fraction of the signatures the socialists are attempting to ban the entire opposition party.

Meanwhile, people stuck living under this horrible regime are starving, unable to find enough food to feed their families. As many as 100,000 people crossed the border just to shop a couple weeks ago. And the situation is worse for children who must go without needed medicines. Many of them will simply die while Maduro continues to stall and play for more time. If Maduro refuses to allow a constitutional challenge to his authority, he may find an unconstitutional one comes next.