Hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters rallied across Venezuela on Wednesday against socialist President Nicolas Maduro, whom they accuse of becoming a dictator by blocking a plebiscite to remove him.
Escalating its anti-Maduro campaign, the opposition Democratic Unity coalition also called for a national strike for Friday and a march to the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas next week, activists and local media said.
The oil-rich South American country is in the throes of a punishing economic crisis that has many poor families skipping meals or surviving on starches amid scarce food and triple-digit inflation.
The opposition coalition says Maduro must go, but Venezuela’s electoral board last week cancelled a planned signature drive to hold a recall referendum against him, citing fraud.
Enraged foes said Maduro, a former bus driver and union leader who narrowly won election to succeed Hugo Chavez in 2013, had crossed the line.
After launching a political trial against him in the National Assembly legislature on Tuesday, the coalition organised marches called the “Takeover of Venezuela” in all major cities on Wednesday.
Reuters journalists in several Venezuelan cities reported large crowds at the opposition rallies, especially in the capital Caracas, collectively numbering hundreds of thousands of people. In the restive western city of San Cristobal, protesters clashed with security forces, witnesses said.
Just back from a tour of major oil-producing countries plus meetings with the Pope and UN Secretary General-designate Antonio Guterres, Maduro counters it is in fact the opposition vying for a coup beneath the veneer of peaceful protests.
Chavez was briefly toppled in a 2002 putsch, when some of the current opposition leaders played key roles.
“We have to stop the cycle of political violence,” Maduro said at a specially convened Committee for the Defence of the Nation at the presidential palace.
Opposition protests two years ago led to 43 deaths, including security officials and both government and opposition supporters. As a result, some Venezuelans are wary of demonstrations or see them as futile.
Venezuela’s poor have to prioritise the all-consuming task of finding affordable food, while many remain sceptical of the opposition, which has a reputation for elitism and whose internal squabbles have for years been a boon for “Chavismo”. Maduro convened the defence committee to analyse the National Assembly’s actions against him and a tentatively scheduled dialogue with the opposition this weekend.
Thousands of red-shirted Maduro supporters also rallied in Caracas, expressing loyalty to the president and denouncing opposition leaders as puppets of US foreign policy.
