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AFP
CARACAS
INTERNATIONAL concerns are mounting over the economic and political crisis in Venezuela, where the military on Saturday was holding a second day of exercises ordered by embattled President Nicolas Maduro.
With the oil-dependent country's economy imploding under recession and hyperinflation, public sentiment is backing Maduro's ouster.
But the socialist president is digging in.
He imposed a state of emergency this week and ordered the two-day war games to show the military can tackle domestic and foreign threats he says are being fomented with US help.
After deploying its Russian-made strike aircraft across Venezuela's skies on Friday, the military on Saturday ran riot squads through their paces on Saturday, state television showed.
The opposition, which has a majority in the congress, this week rejected the state of emergency.
It led protests on Wednesday demanding a recall referendum against Maduro on the basis of a petition that garnered 1.8 million signatures. Seventy percent of Venezuelans want a change of government, polls say.
But the Supreme Court, stacked with judges loyal to Maduro, overruled the legislature and called the emergency decree"constitutional." And electoral officials have been dragging their feet in validating the petition.
Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, whom Maduro narrowly beat to the presidency in 2013 elections following the death of Hugo Chavez, has given dire warnings about the mounting public frustration.
The risk is that"along the way there is a social explosion and, as we have repeated, a coup d'etat," Capriles said in an interview with the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
