Loading ...Venezuela’s Maduro, foes head into crucial showdown
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his opponents face a crucial showdown Thursday as the country’s opposition calls the first national strike since 2002 stoppage that failed to topple Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chavez.
Fifteen years later, Chavez’s socialist party controls vast swathes of the Venezuelan economy, making it harder to bring the country to a halt. Easing the opposition’s task is the fact that much of the economy is already faltering, hamstrung by a plunge in oil prices and years of corruption and mismanagement.
The 24-hour strike is meant to begin at 6 a.m. as an expression of national disapproval of Maduro’s plan to convene a constitutional assembly that would reshape the Venezuelan system to consolidate the ruling party’s power over the few institutions that remain outside its control. The opposition is boycotting a July 30 election to select members of the assembly.
The country’s largest business group, Fedecamaras, has cautiously avoided full endorsement of the strike but its members have told employees that they won’t be punished for coming to work. Fedecamaras played a central role in the months-long 2002-2003 strike that Chavez’s political rivals and opponents in Venezuela’s private business sector orchestrated in an attempt to topple him.