Maduro faces fresh protests

Caracas – Venezuela’s opposition on Saturday called a fresh 48-hour general strike against embattled President Nicolas Maduro’s plans to have the constitution rewritten giving him broader powers.

“We are calling out the entire (Venezuelan) people, all groups in society, for a 48-hour strike” Wednesday and Thursday, lawmaker Simon Calzadilla said.

Calzadilla said that the strike would be capped on Friday with a march demanding that Maduro officially scrap his planned Constituent Assembly vote. The strike is scheduled for July 30.

Earlier police on motorcycles fired tear gas to break up an opposition march on the Supreme Court to press demands that elected socialist Maduro leave office, as months of sometimes deadly anti-government demonstrations showed no signs of abating.

That rally was also meant as a show of support for a slate of 33 magistrates — a so-called shadow supreme court — whose names were put forward on Friday by the opposition to replace Venezuela’s current high court, which is closely allied with Maduro and frequently rules in his favour.

Emboldened by a nationwide strike on Thursday that paralysed parts of the capital Caracas and other Venezuelan cities, opposition leaders held a mock swearing-in ceremony on Friday for the shadow court’s new “judges”.

The shadow court has strong support from the demonstrators, organisers said on Saturday.

In Saturday’s march, hundreds of people took to a key Caracas motorway to head downtown toward the court building. But uniformed National Guard troops riding motorcycles fired tear gas to disperse them.

The Venezuelan intelligence service arrested one of the shadow judges, Angel Zerpa Aponte, the opposition-controlled National Assembly said on Twitter.

With the situation already inflamed, the United States threatened economic sanctions if Maduro proceeds with a controversial July 30 election of a body to rewrite the constitution.

The president has vowed to maintain the July 30 election of 545 members to the “Constitutional Assembly”. The number of deaths in protests across the country since April has reached 103, amounting to about one fatality per day. – AFP