Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks during a meeting at the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas. Maduro installed a national peace dialogue to respond to opposition protests that have shaken Venezuela.
Imprisoned Venezuelan protest leader Leopoldo Lopez yesterday scoffed at President Nicolas Maduro’s efforts to open talks with opponents and businessmen after a month of demonstrations and violence that have killed at least 13 people.
Maduro, 51, seems to have weathered the worst of an explosion of protests against his socialist government that exposed deep discontent with Venezuela’s economic problems and brought the nation’s worst unrest in a decade.
Some students are still setting up roadblocks and clashing with police in Caracas and western Tachira state. But numbers have dropped, and many Venezuelans have begun heading for the beach to enjoy a long weekend for Carnival celebrations.
To try to defuse the crisis further, Maduro and his top officials have been holding talks with business leaders and some anti-government politicians, though the main opposition figureheads such as Henrique Capriles have boycotted the initiative.
Lopez, a hardline opposition leader arrested on charges of fomenting violence, said Maduro’s talk of dialogue was a hypocritical tactic intended to deflate the protests while failing to address the real problems behind them.
“’The dialogue’ is a tactical retreat, as a result of the pressure in the streets. It’s not real conviction,” Lopez said in a message from Ramo Verde prison given to his wife who Tweeted it via her husband’s account @leopoldolopez.
“Maduro’s dialogue is: ‘come to Miraflores (presidential palace) and while I speak to the nation, I pursue, kill and repress in the streets’.”
More people were injured on Thursday night as riot police used teargas against masked and stone-throwing students trying to block a major highway in Caracas.
More than 150 people have been injured this month, and another 500 or so arrested, authorities said. Of those, 55 remain behind bars. They are mostly protesters, but include seven intelligence agents and security officials accused in the shooting of two people in downtown Caracas after a February 12 rally that sparked the worst trouble.
The president says that about 50 people have died in total due to the protests, including indirectly linked cases such as people unable to reach hospitals due to blocked roads.