MADURO FACES BIRTHER SCANDAL FROM OPPONENTS

A birther debate is heating up in Venezuela as President Nicolas Maduro’s opponents seek to push the embattled socialist leader from office at any cost.

On Tuesday, the opposition-controlled congress began debating Maduro’s “constitutional situation” in which lawmakers vow to present evidence that he’s a dual Colombian citizen and therefore constitutionally ineligible to hold Venezuela’s highest office.

The birther argument and allegations that Maduro, pictured, has abandoned the presidency — basically that he has not been doing his job — have been gaining momentum after the opposition last week declared itself in open rebellion and called for mass demonstrations over the government’s decision to suspend a recall referendum seeking the president’s removal.

While both arguments against Maduro are seen as a stretch, analysts say that they’re a natural reaction to the government’s own trampling of the constitution in scrapping the recall that offered the best hope of resolving deeply polarized Venezuela’s political and economic crisis.

Ever since taking office in 2013, Maduro has been beset by unsubstantiated claims and forged documents circulating on the Internet that he was born in the border town of Cucuta, Colombia.

The controversy stems from his mother being Colombian.