Protests If No Recount of Votes, Says Venezuelan Opposition

They don't trust the dictatorship to keep it clean

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski said Thursday that the country's election agency has until Friday to start a promised recount of the ballots from the April 14 presidential vote or face the consequences.

Capriles, who lost the presidential contest by less than 300,000 votes out of more than 14.7 million cast, did not say what those consequences are but his supporters have been calling for mass demonstrations.

The winner of the election, Nicolás Maduro, is an avowed socialist who was the handpicked successor of former president Hugo Chávez, an anti-American strongman who died from cancer.