CARACAS, (Reuters) – President Nicolas Maduro’s government kept dozens of student protesters behind bars yesterday as unrest still rumbled across Venezuela following this week’s violence at political rallies that killed three.
Demonstrators gathered again in various cities, blocking roads and burning tires in some cases, to denounce the repression of protests and make a litany of complaints against Maduro ranging from rampant crime to shortages of basic products.
“We’re going to stay out in the streets for the same reasons as yesterday and the day before: inflation, insecurity and a repressive state that refuses to release our colleagues,” student Marcos Matta, 22, told Reuters, in Caracas.
Defying the president’s prohibition of demonstrations, about 500 people gathered in Caracas’ Altamira Square, a heartland of past opposition protests, to chant slogans and wave banners.
Maduro, a 51-year-old former union activist and bus driver, accuses his foes of seeking a coup against him similar to one that briefly toppled his predecessor Hugo Chavez in 2002.
However, there is no sign the street demonstrations threaten to oust him, nor that the military, whose role was crucial to Chavez’s 36-hour unseating, will turn against Maduro.
The protests might in fact give him a chance to unite competing factions within the ruling Socialist Party, divide the opposition where many moderates oppose the street tactics, and distract Venezuelans’ attention from economic problems.
Maduro has called supporters onto the streets of Caracas for today and insisted unauthorized rallies will be stopped.
“This is not Ukraine,” he said, in reference to months of anti-government protests there in which six people have died.
Opposition activists say about 150 protesters have been arrested in the last two weeks, most after Wednesday’s violence, with most due to face charges of violence and about 90 still behind bars on Friday.
The government puts the number of arrests at about 70.
Hardline opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, whom the government is calling the “face of fascism” and the intellectual author of the violence, remained in his Caracas home yesterday despite a judge’s arrest warrant for him, party colleagues said.
He says peaceful protests have been infiltrated by provocateurs and attacked by militantly pro-government gangs known locally as “colectivos”.
The 42-year-old U.S.-educated economist and leader of the Popular Will party taunted Maduro via Twitter: “@NicolasMaduro: don’t you have the guts to arrest me? Or are you waiting for orders from Havana? I tell you, the truth is on our side.”
Maduro’s foes view him as a stooge of Cuba’s communist government who lacks Chavez’s charisma and is leading the economy to ruin by sticking with failed socialist policies.
It was not immediately evident why police had not acted on the arrest warrant to visit Lopez’s home, though such action could fuel further protests given the tense climate.
