{ {{Pressure mounts on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.}} <\/p>\n
Opposition parties stage marches in effort to step up campaign to topple President Nicolas Maduro via recall referendum.}<\/p>\n
Riot police have fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters in Venezuela’s capital amid opposition demonstrations to pressure electoral authorities into allowing a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n
Protesters and National Guard members clashed on a highway in Caracas on Wednesday where thousands of demonstrators chanted “freedom” and waved copies of the constitution.<\/p>\n
A video showed an officer appearing to use pepper spray against Henrique Capriles, the two-time presidential candidate, during the protest.<\/p>\n
Capriles later said on Twitter that he was fine.<\/p>\n
In the western opposition stronghold of Tachira, protesters brandished signs reading “We don’t want to do die of hunger”, while some masked youths blocked streets with rubbish and prepared Molotov cocktails.<\/p>\n
The Democratic Unity coalition has stepped up its campaign to topple Maduro amid a worsening economic crisis, but says the government-leaning electoral body is intentionally delaying the verification of signatures in favour of the referendum.<\/p>\n
The opposition submitted roughly 1.85 million signatures on May 2 in favour of the referendum.<\/p>\n
If they are validated, the opposition must then request another petition drive and gather around four million signatures to trigger a referendum.<\/p>\n
If the opposition succeeds this year in winning a recall referendum to oust Maduro, whose term ends in 2019, new elections would be held.<\/p>\n
But if a successful recall referendum is held next year, the presidency would fall to the vice president, a post currently held by Aristobulo Isturiz, a loyalist of the governing United Socialist Party.<\/p>\n
The opposition says Maduro, elected in 2013, is pushing the oil-producing country towards economic catastrophe.<\/p>\n
One recent opinion poll showed that almost 70 percent of Venezuelans want Maduro stripped of presidency this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{ {{Pressure mounts on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro.}} Opposition parties stage marches in effort to step up campaign to topple President Nicolas Maduro via recall referendum.} Riot police have fired tear gas at stone-throwing protesters in Venezuela’s capital amid opposition demonstrations to pressure electoral authorities into allowing a recall referendum against President Nicolas Maduro. Protesters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[101],"byline":[2474],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-25285","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-48","tag-internationl","byline-al-jazeera"],"bylines":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"contributors":[{"id":2474,"name":"AL JAZEERA","slug":"al-jazeera","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":null}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25285","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25285"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25285\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25285"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25285"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25285"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=25285"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=25285"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}