VENEZUELA’S right-wing opposition moved to delegitimise the socialist government on Sunday in a clear attempt at a parliamentary coup.

The Democratic Unity Roundtable (Mud)-controlled National Assembly passed an “accord” accusing President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) government of a “rupture of the constitutional order.”

It blamed the government for the independent National Electoral Council’s decision to postpone the Mud’s petitioning for a presidential recall

referendum, after courts in five of Venezuela’s states — since increased to seven — ruled that fraud had been committed during earlier signature-gathering.

The accord called for the council’s directors, judges and “officials responsible for political persecution” to be hauled before the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In an attempt to incite mutiny, it demanded the armed forces not obey any “unconstitutional” orders from the government.

The accord also appealed to the “international community” to “activate all mechanisms necessary” to force the council to call a recall referendum before January 15 — after which regime change would no longer be possible.

And it mandated the appointment of three “rectors” as a rival power to the government and the convening of a special National Assembly session today to rule on the “constitutional situation” of the presidency.

PSUV MPs denounced the actions, while hundreds of pro-government protesters burst in and disrupted the proceedings.

Members from both sides of the house were injured in scuffles.

MP Hector Rodriguez said the Mud’s affiliates had a “completely anti-democratic history,” pointing to their support of the 2002 coup d’etat against late president Hugo Chavez and 2014’s deadly regime change riots.

Mr Maduro, who is on a Middle East tour to gain support for an oil production cap to reverse the price slump that has crippled the Venezuelan economy, said: “The right and imperialism are desperate. We keep working.”

British Venezuela Solidarity Campaign secretary Francisco Dominguez said: “This confirms the profoundly undemocratic nature of most components of Venezuela’s opposition.

“Ever since they won the elections to the National Assembly in December last year they have been trying to engineer a coup d’etat — parliamentary or otherwise — to oust the legitimate, constitutional and democratically elected government.

“Many of their strategists and their mentors in Washington believe that one of the best ways to create the conditions for such a coup is an institutional crisis which is what they are aiming with by this ‘agreement.’

“Extreme sections of the opposition are likely to resort to violence, which they and their mentors believe with enhance the possibilities for the crisis they seek to create.

“Their ‘golpista’ [putschist] intentions must be opposed and vigorously rejected.”