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CARACAS, Venezuela Opponents of Venezuelan President Nicols Maduro on Monday pledged to defy the government with escalating protest tactics, a day after showing their strength in an unofficial referendum that they said drew more than 7million votes condemning his rule.

Leaders of the Democratic Unity coalition say they will bring the country to a halt with a 24-hour general strike Thursday, urging workers to stay home and businesses to shut their doors to protest Maduros controversial plan to overhaul Venezuelas constitution.

They also invited Venezuelans who remain loyal to Hugo Chvez but dislike Maduro, his hand-picked successor, to join them in a unified front to stop the government from moving forward with a July 30 vote to elect delegates for a constituent assembly empowered to rewrite the 1999 constitution. Critics see the maneuver as a naked power grab that would amount to a death sentence for democratic rule.

This is the zero hour, opposition lawmaker Freddy Guevara said Monday, characterizing upcoming protest measures as a last-ditch effort to save the country from full-blown dictatorship.

The U.S. government intensified the pressure on the Maduro government on Monday, with President Trump vowing in a statement to take strong and swift economic actions if the July 30 vote took place. He called Maduro a bad leader who dreams of becoming a dictator and praised Sundays referendum.

Maduro opponents likened the Sunday vote to an act of mass protest. Of the nearly 7.6million Venezuelans said to have participated in the balloting organized by opposition leaders, not election authorities more than 98percent voted to reject the governments plan to draw up a new constitution, opposition leaders said. The vote also urged Venezuelas armed forces to uphold the existing constitution and support early elections.

Buoyed by those results, Guevara said, opposition lawmakers this week will also name new supreme court justices in a repudiation of the current court, which Maduro has stacked with loyalists. The move seems likely to deepen the standoff between Maduro and the opposition- controlled parliament, with the two sides on a path to developing competing legal systems.

[Stripped of their powers, Venezuelan lawmakers accuse Maduro of a coup]

On Monday, Socialist Party officials who back Maduro dismissed the 7.6 million vote tally as wildly inflated, claiming that opposition supporters voted multiple times and that the organizers of the referendum did not bother to actually count the ballots. They did not offer any proof to substantiate their claims.

But Flix Seijas Rodrguez, director of the independent Delphos polling agency, said he was amazed by the results of the referendum, given that it was organized in only three weeks and faced significant challenges. The Maduro government blasted the exercise as illegitimate and hurled threats at organizers while attempting to enforce a news blackout.

Anti-Maduro voters also faced the threat of violence. In one Caracas neighborhood, gunmen opened fire outside a polling station, killing one and injuring four.

On July 30, the Maduro government will ask Venezuelans to elect representatives for the constituent assembly. Government opponents see Maduros effort to rewrite the constitution as potentially a fatal blow to what remains of Venezuelan democracy, particularly if the assembly allows the unpopular Maduro to remain in office beyond 2019, when his term is set to expire.

[Things are so bad in Venezuela that people are rationing toothpaste]

At least 92 people have been killed in more than three months of unrest and near-daily clashes between security forces and protesters. Opposition leaders said Monday that Venezuelas democracy had reached a tipping point, requiring an intensification of street demonstrations and defections from within the government.

We interpret [the results] as a message from the people telling us to keep doing what we have been doing, plus much more, said Juan Andrs Meja, an opposition legislator who organized the referendum. We will respond to that call accordingly.

Some opposition supporters said they were disappointed that the referendum fell short of the 11million votes they were hoping for. The final reported tally of 7.6million votes was also lower than the 7.7million who voted for the opposition in 2015 parliamentary elections.

But analysts pointed out that the referendum was only symbolic, lacking the logistical support and infrastructure of an official election. Only about 15,000 polling stations were set up for the referendum, compared with more than twice as many during ordinary elections.

This wasnt a presidential election, said John Magdaleno, a political consultant and the director of the Polity polling firm. Its just an unofficial consultation.

Activists and analysts compared the turnout with the numbers of votes Chvez obtained when he held similar referendums.

Chvez never got more than 6.5million people to vote in his favor in the referendums, analysts noted, and when Venezuelas economy was humming and he was reelected president in 2012, he obtained just over 8million votes.

He died of cancer in 2013, and Maduro, his Socialist Party successor, has fared poorly in his shadow.

[Government supporters attack Venezuelan congress, injure opposition lawmakers]

Despite the latest demonstration of opposition to his plans, few believe that Maduro is willing to change course. Dismissing the referendum results as inconsequential, he called on his opponents to sit down to start a new round of dialogue with his government.

Maduros opponents are boycotting the July 30 vote, and in recent surveys, 85percent of Venezuelans say they reject changes to the constitution.

People will be disappointed if they expect the government to react directly to the results [of the referendum] or change anything, said Luis Vicente Len, a political analyst and the director of the Datanalisis polling agency, adding that the large turnout was important nonetheless.

More than 7million people participated actively in an act of civil disobedience and ignored the governments allegations that it was an illegal one, he said.

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After protest vote, Maduro's foes warn of 'zero hour' for Venezuela's democracy - Washington Post