CARACAS — A defiant Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro urged supporters to launch a general strike and “rebellion” if the opposition succeeds in ousting him from office in a referendum.
Maduro’s fiery May Day speech came as Venezuela’s emboldened opposition prepared on Tuesday to present more than 10 times the roughly 200,000 signatures needed to begin organizing a referendum to remove the unpopular president, blamed by many for the country’s deep economic crisis.
Maduro vowed to fight for his job, despite a deep crisis in the country that has seen riots and looting in the second city over four-hour daily blackouts introduced to save energy.
“If the oligarchy some day does something against me and manages to take this palace, I order you to declare yourselves in rebellion and decree an indefinite general strike,” he told supporters massed outside the presidential palace on Sunday.
Maduro told them the referendum “is an option, not an obligation. Here the only obligation is the presidential election and that will be in 2018.”
A recent poll found that more than two-thirds of Venezuelans want Maduro, elected president by a razor-thin margin in 2013, to leave office.
Once-booming Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, has plunged into economic chaos as global crude prices have collapsed. It has been in recession since 2013.
The import-dependent country faces acute shortages of food and basic goods like toilet paper due to a lack of currency, more than 96 percent of which it gets from oil sales.
Maduro has vowed to press on with the socialist “revolution” launched in 1999 by his predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, which has given Venezuela a government-led economy. — AFP
