Action over reform plans
Venezuelans go on strike, US imposes new sanctions
Opponents of President Nicolas Maduro at home and abroad tried again yesterday to pressure the socialist leader into halting his plans to rewrite Venezuela’s constitution though there was no public sign their efforts were working.
The Trump Administration announced sanctions on 13 current and former members of Maduro’s Administration, freezing their US assets and barring Americans from doing business with them. The United States also joined with a dozen other regional governments in urging Maduro to suspend Monday’s election of a national assembly for rewriting the charter.
Far from derail Maduro, he appeared emboldened by the sanctions, praising those accused by the US Government of undermining the nation’s democracy and abusing human rights.
“We don’t recognise any sanction,” he said. “For us, it’s a recognition of morality, loyalty to the nation, and civic honesty.
Those moves came as a coalition of Venezuelan opposition groups organised a second national strike in a week.
Highways were mostly empty and businesses shuttered across the country as millions of people observed the 48-hour strike and activists threw up roadblocks in many neighbourhoods to keep others from getting to work.
Clashes between police and protesters erupted at some roadblocks in Caracas, and the chief prosecutor’s office reported at least one person killed. That increased the official count of dead in nearly four months of demonstrations to at least 98.
Monday’s vote looks set to start the process of rewriting the nation’s constitution by electing members of a special assembly to reshape the charter.
The opposition is boycotting the vote, saying election rules were rigged to guarantee Maduro a majority in the constitutional assembly.
Maduro did not address the nation yesterday but state-run television was filled with scenes of his backers exhorting the public to go to the polls on Monday.
Meanwhile, opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez called on Venezuelans to support the strike in his first direct public message since being moved from prison to house arrest this month. The 46-year-old former Caracas-area mayor, who was sentenced to 14 years in 2015 after being convicted of inciting violence during a previous spate of protests, also appealed to the military not to deploy for Sunday’s election.
Three days of protests are planned leading up to Monday’s vote, starting with the strike and culminating tomorrow with a demonstration billed as a “takeover of Caracas”.— AP