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Caracas / AFP
Venezuela’s opposition held new protests, seeking to convert widespread anger over food shortages and economic havoc into pressure for a referendum on removing embattled President Nicolas Maduro.
Clad in the red, yellow and blue of the Venezuelan flag, hundreds of opposition supporters rallied on a square in eastern Caracas, brandishing messages aimed at the allegedly pro-Maduro National Electoral Board (CNE): “Recall referendum now†and “My signature counts.†An economic crisis triggered by the collapse in the price of oil, the country’s main export, has made daily life increasingly hard for Venezuelans, who face long lines at depleted supermarkets, hyperinflation, violent crime and daily power cuts.
“We’re tired of shortages. We’re not eating properly at my house. There’s not enough money for anything,†41-year-old Morella Briceno said at the rally.
The opposition has submitted a petition with 1.8 million signatures in favor of a recall referendum and wants electoral authorities to move on to the next step: verifying at least 200,000 of those signatures with fingerprint scans.
The opposition would then need to submit a second petition with four million more signatures. The opposition warns Venezuela risks erupting into unrest if electoral authorities do not let them call a referendum this year.
But their fractious coalition, the center-right National Unity Roundtable (MUD), has struggled to rally large numbers of protesters.
Monday’s demo drew just a few hundred people in the capital.
Deadly looting incident
Many Venezuelans may be too busy waiting in lines to protest, too afraid of the security forces or haunted by violence that killed 43 people during pro- and anti-government demonstrations in 2014. But spontaneous protests against food shortages have broken out in neighbourhoods once seen as bastions for Maduro and his late predecessor, Hugo Chavez.
Like scores of looting sprees that have erupted since the start of the year across Venezuela, these tend to be forcefully stamped out by heavily armed police and soldiers.
Riots broke out on Sunday outside a supermarket on the Caribbean island of Margarita off the Venezuelan coast, local media said.