Escalated street protests and 24-hour strike organized in weeks leading up to election of assembly to rewrite constitution after 7.1m people rejected proposal

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Venezuelan opposition leaders have called for their supporters to escalate street protests and support a 24-hour national strike later this week after more than 7.1 million people rejected a government plan to rewrite the constitution.

“It is time for zero hour,” said Freddy Guevara, a leading opposition figure on Monday.

“We call on the whole country this to join massively and peacefully a national civic strike of 24 hours on Thursday as a mechanism of pressure and preparation for the definitive escalation which will be next week,” he added.

The opposition-controlled National Assembly also announced that it will name new members of the country’s supreme court, a move certain to be blocked by President Nicolás Maduro’s administration. The court is controlled by loyalists of Maduro’s ruling socialist party.

The opposition said 7,186,170 Venezuelans participated in a symbolic referendum rejecting President Nicolás Maduro’s plans for the 30 July election of an assembly that would remake the country’s political system.



Maduro’s allies have called on the assembly to impose executive branch authority over the few remaining institutions outside the control of Venezuela’s socialist ruling party.

A coalition of some 20 opposition parties assembled in its headquarters Monday to call for a “zero hour” campaign of civil disobedience in the two weeks leading to the government vote. More than three months of opposition protests have left at least 93 people dead and 1,500 wounded. More than 500 protesters and government opponents have been jailed.

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“Right now we have to escalate and deepen this street movement,” National Assembly President Julio Borges told local radio station Exitos Monday morning ahead of the opposition announcement.

Sunday’s opposition vote was a strong but not overwhelming showing that fell short of the opposition’s 7.7m vote showing in 2015 legislative elections and the 7.5m votes that brought Maduro to power in 2013. Opposition leaders said that was because they were able to set up only 2,000 polling places in a symbolic exercise the government labeled as illegitimate.

Still, some supporters said they were disappointed.

“I thought it was going to be more,” said Mariela Arana, a 56-year-old school counselor. “But these 7 million people spoke and it was plenty.”

The day was marred by violence when a 61-year-old woman was killed and four people wounded by gunfire after government supporters on motorcycles swarmed an opposition polling site in a church in western Caracas.

David Smilde, a Tulane University expert on Venezuela, said the result would likely rally the international community even more strongly against the July 30 vote.

“Overall, this vote, I think, makes it difficult for the government to just proceed as planned,” Smilde said. “I think it’s going to embolden the international community to reject it.”

Various former Latin American heads of state attended Sunday’s vote as observers in support of the opposition.



The Venezuelan government declared ex-Mexico president Vicente Fox “persona non grata” for “insulting” Venezuelans and “abusing hospitality”.

The opposition released only turnout numbers Sunday night, not tallies of responses to those questions, although virtually all who voted were believed to have answered “yes” to the central rejection of the constitutional rewrite.

In smaller numbers in many parts of the capital, government supporters went to polling stations in a rehearsal for the 30 July vote.

“Our president [Hugo] Chávez supported the poor, the people,” said Yveth Melendez, a 41-year-old homemaker waiting outside a school in the south Caracas neighborhood of El Valle, a stronghold of government support that has been weakening in recent years. “Today we’re following his legacy, with President Nicolás Maduro ... The constitutional assembly is something that benefits the people.”

But Isabel Santander, a 67-year-old retired auditor, said she was voting against the constitutional assembly as a protest against the country’s economic collapse.

“I signed because there’s no medicine, no food, no security,” she said. “There’s no separation of powers, no freedom of expression.”

Maduro and the military dominate most state institutions, but the opposition controls the congress and holds three of 23 governorships. The country’s chief prosecutor has recently broken with the ruling party.

The opposition called backers to 2,000 sites across the country to fill out ballots featuring three yes-or-no questions: Do they reject the constitutional assembly? Do they want the armed forces to back congress? Do they support the formation of a government comprised both of Maduro backers and opponents?