Few heed calls for mass protest
CARACAS, Venezuela — Few demonstrators heeded opposition calls for a mass protest Friday in Venezuela’s capital against President Nicolas Maduro’s divisive push to rewrite the constitution by a constituent assembly to be elected Sunday.
Streets in Caracas were largely devoid of protests a day after Interior Minister Nestor Reverol announced that authorities were prohibiting any demonstrations from taking place through Tuesday.
Opposition leaders had urged Venezuelans to demonstrate anyway in a protest they billed as the “Taking of Caracas,” hoping for a dramatic culmination of three days of protests that started with a 48-hour nationwide general strike. But the hundreds of thousands who have sometimes taken to the streets during nearly four months of antigovernment protests were largely absent.
“Here we are in the streets, just like the first day,” opposition lawmaker Jose Manuel Olivares said, urging people to reject Reverol’s demonstration ban.
There were isolated clashes between National Guard troops and small groups of young demonstrators who call themselves the Resistance. A few protest barricades went up in oppositionfriendly eastern Caracas, but the city was relatively calms two days before Sunday’s constituent assembly election.
Maduro has deployed the military and police to clear blockades and protect a vote that he says is meant to end the power struggle with the opposition-controlled National Assembly, which he blames for Venezuela’s spiraling political, economic and social crisis. The opposition is boycotting the vote, saying the election rules have been rigged to favor the ruling socialist party.
International pressure to cancel the vote intensified Friday, with U.S. Vice President Mike Pence reiterating in a telephone call with opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez that the U.S. would respond with “strong and swift economic actions” if the election proceeds.