Venezuela opposition protests a risky bet
 

CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s opponents are betting on the power of the street as they try to force him from ******, but their strategy could backfire.

With crisis-racked Venezuela stuck in a downward spiral of hyperinflation, shortages, and violent crime, discontent is on the rise.

Yet the opposition has struggled to get large tur**ut at its protests -- a cornerstone of its strategy to force authorities to allow a referendum on removing Maduro from power by the end of the year.

The **table exception was on September 1, when an anti-Maduro march drew a million people into the streets of Caracas, according an estimate by organisers, who called it the largest rally in decades.

But dozens of other protests in recent months have rallied only a fraction of that.

On Wednesday, for example, the nationwide follow-up to the September 1 march drew numbers in the thousands. Maduro’s supporters staged counter-demonstrations that were just as large.

Small tur**ut risks feeding into the leftist president’s rhetoric that the opposition coalition behind the referendum drive, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), is an "isolated" elite that does **t represent the people.

Analysts say the challenge for the center-right opposition is to mobilize a broad base, including traditional supporters of "Chavismo" -- the movement named for Maduro’s late predecessor and mentor, the socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.

"Protests will have to be massive and sustained over a period of weeks or months," said analyst Risa Grais-Targow of the New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group.

"And critically, they will have to transcend traditional opposition supporters and include traditional Chavista supporters."

That is something the fragmented opposition coalition MUD has struggled to do.

An umbrella group whose members span the political spectrum, it leans to the center-right but has been riven by divisions.

The peculiarities of the Venezuela crisis also make it difficult to rally big crowds.

The crippling shortages mean Venezuelans have to spend hours in line to buy food and basic goods, hopping from store to store in search of increasingly scarce products ranging from flour to medicine to toilet paper.

There is also frustration with the slow pace of change in a country where Maduro retains a strong grip on the levers of power after 17 years of leftist rule.

For instance, the opposition scored a major victory when it won a landslide in legislative elections in December -- only to find itself stymied at every turn by the Supreme Court.

"People are a little disappointed because we haven’t achieved our objective," said one protester, 21-year-old dentistry student Jose Miguel Villa, at Wednesday’s demonstration in the city of Los Teques, just outside the capital.

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