“The fear Nicolas Maduro has of the people who want recall and change”, Henrique Capriles Radonski, governor of Venezuela’s Miranda state and a key opposition leader who nearly defeated Maduro in a 2013 election, said in a statement.
Advertisement
Responding to accusations Maduro made against him, the Uruguayan diplomat turned them against the Venezuelan president.
In recent days, Maduro has railed against alleged interference from the USA and elsewhere that he says is part of a campaign to remove his government from power by illegitimate means. Now, 20% of voters – almost 4 million people – must sign a second petition to trigger a referendum where at least 7,587,579 votes – the number of votes cast for Mr.
Addressing a news conference on Tuesday, Mr Capriles said: “If Maduro wants to apply this decree he will have to bring out the warplanes and the tanks into the street, because he will have to apply it through force”.
He said that the U.S. military had flown a spy plane last week over Venezuela.
But the “estado de conmocion interior” Mr Maduro is now threatening could take matters further – allowing the government, for instance, to impose greater military control over the population.
The country’s benchmark dollar bond due in 2027 fell for the third day this week, with the price declining 0.66 cent in NY to 42.67 cents on the dollar, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
“Decide whether you are with the constitution or with Maduro”, Capriles said, referring to military leaders.
In Venezuela – mired in deep economic malaise and beset by intense violence – demonstrators took to the streets on Wednesday to protest the increasingly embattled and isolated socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro.
President Nicolas Maduro’s government counters it is the United States that has dragged its feet on providing visas for its officials and accuses Washington of seeking to subvert his government. The number of people killed in Venezuela in the first three month of this year has outstripped the civilian toll of Afghanistan’s war in all of 2015, the New York Times noted in an editorial damning Maduro’s rule.
But the government has already made it clear that the referendum will not go ahead. “They created chaos. Now they are coming after Venezuela”, he said.
A deepening economic crisis and crime have led many Venezuelans to pack their bags, with the USA state of Florida a prime destination.
“This decree is stretching out to ambits beyond the economic field, the political ambit, the ambit of what the president has termed as ‘foreign threats”, coup attempts, public order matters, which could put the Venezuelan State in jeopardy”, the lawyer told El Universal.
Advertisement
At a demonstration in the Caribbean coastal town of Coro, protesters formed a human chain in the streets.
