Guaido tactic for spurring Venezuela military uprising gets little response

Caracas — Scarcely 100 people showed up in Caracas this Saturday to approach the barracks and ask the military to rise up against the Nicolas Maduro government, as the public had been called to do by National Assembly Speaker Juan Guaido, recognized by more than 50 countries as interim president of Venezuela.

The largest group headed for the military unit at the La Casona presidential residence, which for years has not been occupied by any president, and where they were stopped by a police unit equipped with anti-riot gear.

There the demonstrators, mostly senior citizens, attempted to establish a dialogue and deliver to the cops the Amnesty Law document, passed by the opposition majority of the National Assembly, which guarantees them pardon if they rebel against Maduro.

“I’ve come here today because we have to fight for freedom in this country and because every day we go from bad to worse - we don’t have food, we don’t have medicines, we don’t receive any of the benefits the government is supposed to provide,” Martin Mora, one of those trying to reach the barracks, told EFE.

After a brief wait, the group of Bolivarian National Police (PNB) was joined by members of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB, military police), also with anti-riot gear and some wearing gas masks.

The commander of the GNB unit accepted the document and later burned it, EFE observed. He said that he was doing his duty.

He also disappointed opposition members like Mora, who hoped “the military would listen to the people.”

“The people ask for help because we can no longer stand this situation,” he said before expressing his disappointment at the military’s response, and added that he expected more of them since last Tuesday when Guaido led a failed military uprising.

In front of Naval Command Headquarters in downtown Caracas, Guaido’s call got even less of a response, and a spokesman read the document over a megaphone beyond the police cordon.

Standing there was Rogelio Diaz, councilman of Caracas and national director of the Copei party

Diaz told EFE that the expectations with which they began the day included getting the military to listen to them and demanding “that they put themselves on the side of the people.”

“What we’re asking of them is to guarantee respect for the Constitution and to understand that today more than 80 to 90 percent of the Venezuelan people are pleading for change. A democratic change, a change so as not to be a country where children die for want of medicines and food,” he said.

Venezuela is going through a political and social crisis that heightened after last January 23 when National Assembly Speaker Juan Guaido declared himself interim president on the basis of certain articles in the Venezuelan Constitution and won widespread support among countries of the Americas and some 20 European nations.

The Venezuelan opposition, which does not recognize the new six-year term in office to which Maduro was sworn in last Jan. 10, says the country is suffering a “complex humanitarian emergency” and has sought help from the international community to deal with it.