Venezuela opposition calls nationwide strike against Maduro

Yahoo – AFP, Maria Isabel SANCHEZ, July 17, 2017

"Venezuela wants to live better" -- voters celebrate in Caracas after taking part in
 an opposition-organized ballot challenging embattled Venezuelan President Nicolas
Maduro's plan to rewrite the constitution (AFP Photo/FEDERICO PARRA)

Caracas (AFP) - Venezuela's opposition called a nationwide strike for Thursday to press President Nicolas Maduro to back off a rewriting of the constitution, ratcheting up tensions after an unofficial vote rejecting Maduro's plan and amid months of deadly protests.

The strike call, issued on Monday, was part of what the opposition called a "final offensive" aimed at forcing Maduro out through early elections before his term ends in 2019.

On Sunday, in an event organized by the opposition, more than a third of Venezuela's 19 million voters rejected Maduro's bid to have a citizens' body called a "Constituent Assembly" elected on July 30 to redraft the constitution.

Several countries lauded the balloting. White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Monday it sent an "unmistakable statement" to Maduro and his government.

The EU's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said that Maduro should suspend his plan, or he "risks further polarizing the country and increasing confrontation."

However Maduro and his government, backed by a loyal military, have dug in against the opposition tactics and the international criticism.

Despite growing public anger at food and medicine shortages under a spiralling economic crisis that has fed into the opposition movement, authorities in Caracas portray the efforts against them as illegitimate and the result of interference from the "imperialist" United States.

Julio Borges (C), leader of Venezuela's opposition-controlled legislature, says

 the vote result shows a public desire to see President Nicolas Maduro leave 

power before the end of his term in 2019 (AFP Photo/RONALDO SCHEMIDT)

'Escalation' to follow

"We are calling all the country to take part in a massive and violence-free protest through a nationwide civic strike for 24 hours," said one leader in the opposition coalition, Freddy Guevara.

He said the stoppage was a "mechanism for pressure and to prepare for the definitive escalation to take place next week."

There were fears, however, that the stepped-up confrontation could worsen violence in Venezuela's streets. Since April, when anti-Maduro protests and police pushback turned bloody, 96 people have died.

The opposition set the scene for the strike with its vote Sunday, which it called a "plebiscite" but which the government dismissed as "illegal."

Electoral authorities, who have systematically sided with Maduro against the opposition-controlled legislature, denied authorization for the balloting.

Academics who oversaw the symbolic poll as guarantors of its credibility counted a turnout of more than seven million voters, undermining legitimacy for Maduro's future Constituent Assembly.

Brazil's foreign ministry said in a statement "the high turnout in the plebiscite... was an unmistakable sign the Venezuelan people want democracy quickly restored." It, too, called on Maduro to shelve his Constituent Assembly idea.

Volunteers count the ballots in Caracas during the opposition-organized vote 

challenging Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his plan to rewrite

the constitution (AFP Photo/FEDERICO PARRA)

Change wanted

Venezuela's opposition, invigorated by the voter support and the international reactions, clearly was keen to seize the moment.

"The mandate the people have given us is clear," said Julio Borges, leader of the opposition-controlled National Assembly.

Borges said the vote showed a public desire to see Maduro leave power before his term ends.

Political analyst John Magdaleno told AFP that "there is evidence of a persistent and durable demand for political change."

The result of Sunday's vote may not have been binding, but Venezuela "sent a clear message to the national executive and the world," announced Central University of Venezuela president Cecilia Garcia Arocha, one of several experts who oversaw Sunday's vote.

Garcia noted that 6,492,381 voted in the country and 693,789 voted abroad, according to a count of 95 percent of ballots. Final results would be released Monday, she said.

According to Borges, once all ballots are counted, there will be some 7.5 million votes, which he said would be sufficient to overturn Maduro's mandate if there were a recall referendum.

To lend weight to the vote, a group of former Latin American presidents, including Mexico's Vicente Fox, who was declared "persona non grata" by the government, took part as observers.

But Luis Vicente Leon, head of the polling firm Datanalisis, said the opposition's challenge now was to leverage the vote to "crack" Maduro's stance and "press for negotiations that would give an peaceful chance for change."

The opposition has accused Maduro of driving the country into bankruptcy, and of planning to use the Constituent Assembly to entirely sideline the legislature.

For many ordinary Venezuelans suffering under shortages of basic goods, sky-high inflation and climbing unemployment, the vote was a way of expressing frustration at the president and his policies.

Yet Maduro has insisted his proposed Constituent Assembly is "the only path" to peace and economic recovery. Thus far, he has shown no sign of backing down.

Thirst for democracy catches world powers off guard

Google – AFP, Nicolas Revise (AFP), 1 March 2014

Thai anti-government protesters carry a large national flag as they parade

during a rally in Bangkok on January 25, 2014 (AFP/File, Pornchai Kittiwongsakul)

Washington — Time was, overturning a freely-elected government would have earned a sharp US rebuke. But as people power revolts sweep some countries, Washington is increasingly giving its blessing to ousting leaders accused of betraying democracy.

From Egypt, where the nation's first democratically-elected president Islamist leader Mohamed Morsi was toppled in July by the army, to Ukraine where Viktor Yanukovych, brought to power in 2010 polls, fled his post after months of street protests, the US has had to fine-tune its response.

Indeed US Secretary of State John Kerry said bluntly this week: "A democracy is not defined solely by an election."

"You can have a democratically-elected government, but you don't have democratically-instituted reforms that actually give you a democracy, a full, practicing, functioning democracy," Kerry told reporters.

"And what you have in many places is a general election, a popular election, absent reform, present with great corruption, great cronyism and a huge distortion of democratic process."

While at first glance protests in Thailand and Venezuela may have nothing in common with the demonstrations against the elected leaders in Ukraine and Egypt, analysts and diplomats argue there is often a common core.

It is "an incredible yearning for modernity, for change, for choice, for empowerment of individuals that is moving across the world, and in many cases moving a lot faster than political leadership is either aware of or able to respond to," Kerry said.

-'People must act'-

French intellectual Jacques Attali, once an advisor to former president François Mitterrand, asked "what are the people supposed to do when democracy has been betrayed by those they brought to power?"

People stand on the awning outside the regional government building

in Kharkiv, Ukraine, on March 1, 2014 (AFP, Sergey Bobok)

"The people have to act, demonstrate, remind the leaders of their promises. And if they don't succeed in convincing them, they have to bring them down," wrote Attali in his blog for the French magazine L'Express.

Despite accusations from Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro that the US is fomenting unrest in his country, analysts see little direct involvement by Washington in triggering revolts even if later on, such as in Ukraine, there is an open eagerness to help the struggle towards democracy.

Top US diplomat for Europe, Victoria Nuland, even visited the protestors on Independence Square in Kiev in December to hand out bread in a high-profile show of support for their desire to move closer to Europe and away from the clutches of the communist authorities in Moscow, which since the end of the Cold War has had difficult ties with the US.

"It is accurate to say that where regimes violate human rights, move in that direction or are involved in corruption, that those patterns of behavior are viewed negatively by the US, the UK and other countries," said Mark Schneider, senior vice president of the International Crisis Group.

"But I think that it is rare that they move from that judgment to support in any way violent activities. I think they are almost always somewhat surprised by the depth, power, determination to accept sacrifice by people in certain circumstances."

The situation in Thailand, a constitutional monarchy since 1932 where the king is highly revered, is somewhat unique.

Protestors have been pressing for Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra to step aside in favor of an unelected "people's council" to introduce vaguely defined reforms such as tackling alleged corruption.

- A new 'class conflict'-

An anti-corruption panel is now pressing negligence charges against Yingluck that could lead to her removal from office and a five-year ban from politics.

Demonstrators stand next to car on fire during a protest against the

 government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in San Cristobal, capital

 of the western border state of Tachira, Venezuela, on February 22, 2014 

(AFP/File, Luis Robayo)

But Paul Chambers, director of research at the Institute of South East Asian Affairs at Chiang Mai University, harked back to the radical philosophers of the early 20th century to draw parallels with a new "class conflict."

"Dominant parties which continue to benefit from such (elite) systems are seen by mostly middle and upper classes as impediments to freedom and facilitators of corruption," argued Chambers, while lower classes have a more basic desire for empowerment found just by casting a vote.

"These clashing concepts of democracy and democratic legitimacy threatens to rapidly destabilize the political essence of mostly young democracies, reducing nations to potential civil war, a rebirth of tyranny and economic malaise," argued Chambers.

Kerry called late Friday for an investigation into "politically-motivated" attacks which have left 23 people dead in Thailand, including four children, but renewed assurances that Washington is not taking sides in the upheaval.

He had the same message for Venezuela urging dialogue and revealing that the United States is working with its allies in South America to find an acceptable third party to help mediate an end to three weeks of often violent protests against Maduro's lefist government.

"Unlike in Ukraine, right now in Venezuela there is no an alternative power strong enough to initiate regime change," said political professor Carlos Romero from the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

He bemoaned that so far there had been no international effort to end the violence, unlike the diplomatic flurry around Ukraine and Egypt, an absence he attributed to his country's lack of geopolitical significance.

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Venezuelans on streets again as protest leader awaits trial

Opposing marches on Saturday come after president Nicolás Maduro played down protest movement on Friday

theguardian.com, Virginia López in Caracas,  Saturday 22 February 2014

Opposition supporters march against the Maduro government in Caracas
on Saturday. Photograph: Jorge Silva/Reuters

Venezuelans have taken to the streets for the second time in ten days in opposing marches for and against the Maduro administration. The government has asked women to rally around the presidential palace, while the opposition has called on supporters to protest against the country's mounting street crime and to demand the disarmament of violent pro-government groups.

What began two weeks ago in the western state of Táchira as a student-led street movement demanding that the government address safety concerns on a university campus following the assault of a student soon spread to other cities. In the capital, Caracas, the street marches were spearheaded by opposition leader Leopoldo López, who called for protests to continue until the president, Nicolás Maduro stepped down from power. López currently awaits trial in a military jail.

Since the protests began, 10 people have died, 137 have been injured and 104 arrested, according to government figures.

In a press conference with foreign media on Friday, Maduro said the protests – the worst since his razor-thin election victory against Henrique Capriles last April – are only occurring in 18 of the country's 335 municipalities, all of which, he contends, are under opposition rule.

Maduro reiterated that the events of the last two weeks are a coup-in-the-making backed by the US and financed by Colombia's ex-president Álvaro Uribe, whom Maduro accuses López of working closely with. The proof of his allegations, he says, "will soon come to light".

But as Venezuelans take to the streets again it is hard to predict whether the march will be the last, or if it will serve to inject new energy into an opposition that has been dispersed over the last couple of nights by National Guard troops firing rubber bullets and teargas and tearing down the camps students set up on street corners.

In San Cristóbal, the state-capital of Táchira, where military action was felt the strongest, troops and tanks took to the streets on Wednesday to disperse crowds and to clear debris that was blocking the city's main roads. According to locals, the internet remained down until Friday.

In another effort to neutralise mounting tensions, the minister of energy, Rafael Ramirez, has banned fuel distribution to areas he considers "under-siege".

Human Rights Watch has issued a statement condemning the systematic violation of personal freedom and the unlawful imprisonment of civilians.

Adding to the uncertainty reigning in the streets of Venezuela is the complete media blackout. Private and public TV stations in the country have given little coverage to the street protests, or even to the incarceration of López, who now awaits trial in a military prison on the outskirts of Caracas on charges of sedition.

In the most flagrant demonstration of state censorship yet, several members of a CNN team had their journalist accreditation revoked and left the country amid accusations of "contributing with their coverage to psychological warfare".

But despite accusing the US of meddling in the country's internal affairs and expelling three US diplomat, Maduro has invited Obama to "a sincere dialogue between equals".

"Accept the challenge and we will start a high-level dialogue and put the truth on the table," Maduro said in a nationwide TV address.

Michael Shifter, head of the US thinktank Inter-American Dialogue, says that despite the government's severe weaknesses, it does not appear to be on the verge of collapse.

"Given the gravity of the current situation, it is not surprising that more and more Venezuelans are prepared to take to the streets to express their profound discontent with the government's ineptitude and the country's rapid descent," he said.

"It is not clear what can be accomplished through this approach.  It depends very much on what the government does now – both in dealing with sustained protests and Venezuela's deepening economic distress. If there is no relief on the economic front, it is likely that the protests will only intensify… Any reconciliation or even meaningful dialogue between the government and opposition forces seems like a long way off."

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Venezuelan security forces break up student protests in Caracas

Deutsche Welle, 15 February 2014

Security forces in Venezuela have deployed tear gas and water canon to break up a student protest in the capital, Caracas. The clash comes two days after three people died in violence at anti-government rallies.

Some 500 students blocked the main highway in Caracas on Friday, choking off traffic for several hours. Venezuelan security forces deployed tear gas and water cannon to clear the protesters, who responded by throwing rocks and burning trash. So far, no injuries have been reported.

Venezuela's latest unrest began 10 days ago when students in Caracas rallied to protest against the government's handling of public safety and the economy. Venezuela suffers from rampant crime, inflation and shortages of basic goods.

On Wednesday, the demonstrations turned bloody when three people were shot dead during clashes (pictured above) between security forces and protesters in the capital.

Twitter said on Friday that the Venezuelan government had blocked people from sharing videos and images of the unrest on its social media service.

The San Francisco-based company went on to say that protesters could get around the government filter by having their tweets delivered to smartphones via text message.

Some of the protesters have called for President Nicolas Maduro to step down. While some politicians have come out in support of the protestors, opposition leader Henrique Capriles has said that the conditions are not right for Maduro to leave office. Capriles was defeated by Maduro, the successor to the late Hugo Chavez, in last year's presidential election.

President Maduro has accused the protesters of trying to overthrow his government.

slk/crh (AP, AFP)

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