Caracas  - Venezuela's opposition leaders on Monday warned President Hugo Chavez that the referendum victory that removed term limits on his re-election "was no landslide," and he would need to seek greater consensus to remain in power.

Opposition leaders noted that 6 million Venezuelans, or 54 per cent of voters, favoured a proposal that allows the president unlimited re-election bids, while 5 million (46 per cent) voted against it and 32 per cent of those registered to cast their ballot, abstained.

Luis Ignacio Planas, leader of the conservative party Copei, said the opposition could be happy with the fact that 5 million Venezuelans ignored the government "blackmail."

"We will keep growing. We have been conquering the hearts of a growing number of Venezuelans," Planas said at a press conference.

He said Chavez failed to attain the 7-million-vote ceiling he had reached when he was re-elected for the presidency in 2006.

"(Chavez's) was a Pyrrhic victory, his victory over democratic forces was no landslide. Let us hope he will draw a good lesson from these results because almost half the country said no to the re- election project. The government has to understand that it is a government for all Venezuelans, not for a portion of them," Planas said.

Ismael Garcia, secretary general of the centre-left party Podemos, which once supported Chavez, said the opposition has to be ready for "many battles" in a very polarized setting.

"Here it's not just a matter of demonstrating, or of criticizing, but of making proposals and giving alternative ideas to what is happening, and of turning out to vote in massive numbers," he said.

He claimed that "rules and procedures were violated" in Sunday's vote and that the government followed a "fraudulent path."

Caracas Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledezma noted that the government should now set aside its political agenda to focus on the "social agenda" that would solve the country's problems.

The Un Nuevo Tiempo party said it would file a formal complaint before electoral authorities against the way the government used the resources of the state to campaign in favour of its proposal, which according to UNT and to many observers led to a heavily imbalanced election. (dpa)