Venezuela plans army exercises as Maduro seeks to prolong emergency powers

Caracas: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced undefined “military exercises” for the embattled nation, just a day after pledging to prolong his government’s special emergency powers.
Speaking in Caracas’s Ibarra Square after a march Saturday by several hundred supporters, Maduro said his opponents are orchestrating foreign military intervention in Venezuela. Exercises by the army and militia groups would prepare “for any scenario,” Maduro said.
“The oligarchy’s plan is to disturb the peace so they can justify foreign intervention in Venezuela,” Maduro said in televised remarks at the rally. “I’m not an extremist for saying this, but they’re extremists for wanting to carry this out.”
Maduro’s moves added to the sense of political and economic tension gripping the country beset by the world’s highest inflation, shortages of basic goods, and currency controls. Supporters of opposition groups who are urging a presidential recall vote demonstrated simultaneously on Saturday.
Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe said on May 12 that Venezuela’s opposition may need protection from outside armed forces. On Saturday, Maduro pledged legal action against Uribe, without giving details.
The announcement of military drills follows Maduro’s decision on Friday to extend an emergency period that grants his administration greater autonomy in drafting national policy. Opposition politicians, who have controlled Venezuela’s congress since December, say Maduro’s move to expand his autonomy is illegal and have pledged to block it.
On Saturday, Venezuela's opposition slammed a state of emergency decreed by Maduro and vowed to press home efforts to remove the leftist leader this year amid a grim economic crisis.
"We're talking about a desperate president who is putting himself on the margin of legality and constitutionality," said Democratic Unity coalition leader Jesus Torrealba, adding Maduro was losing support within his own bloc.
"If this state of emergency is issued without consulting the National Assembly, we would technically be talking about a self-coup," he told hundreds of supporters who waved Venezuelan flags and chanted "he's going to fall".
The opposition won control of the National Assembly in a December election, propelled by voter anger over product shortages, raging inflation that has annihilated salaries, and rampant violent crime, but the legislature has been routinely undercut by the Supreme Court.
Protests are on the rise and a key poll shows nearly 70 per cent of Venezuelans now say Maduro must go this year.
Critics of Maduro, a former union leader and bus driver, say he should instead focus on people's urgent needs.
"There will be a social explosion if Maduro doesn't let the recall referendum happen," said protester Marisol Dos Santos, 34, an office worker at a supermarket where she says some 800 people queue up daily.
But the opposition fear authorities are trying to delay a referendum until 2017, when the presidency would fall to the vice president, a post currently held by Socialist Party loyalist Aristobulo Isturiz.
"If you block this democratic path we don't know what might happen in this country," two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said at the demonstration.
"Venezuela is a time bomb that can explode at any given moment."