Acting President

March 8, 2013, 5:29pm

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) – Vice President Nicolas Maduro will be sworn in as acting president of Venezuela on Friday after a state funeral is held for Hugo Chavez, the speaker of the National Assembly said Thursday.

Legislature chief Diosdado Cabello made the announcement on national television.

He said Maduro would be sworn in at 7 p.m. in the same military academy complex where the president has been lying in state.

On Tuesday, after announcing Chavez’s death, the government said Maduro would both be acting president and the presidential candidate of the governing party.

The opposition cried foul. Venezuela’s constitution specifies that upon Chavez’s death, Cabello should have become interim president and elections for a new president called within 30 days.

A former Supreme Court judge, Blanca Rosa Marmo, said that Maduro could not run for president as vice president.