Venezuelan Opposition Stages Massive Anti-Chavez Rally

www.voanews.com VOA News 26 Jan 2003, 08:21 UTC

Hundreds of thousands of opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez have jammed a major highway in Caracas to back a 55-day opposition strike that has crippled the nation's economy.

In what is being called "the longest protest in history," demonstators camped overnight along a 24-kilometer stretch of highway Saturday to press their demand that the president step down.

The massive street demonstration follows a recent Supreme Court ruling that suspended a non-binding referendum scheduled for February second on the president's rule.

Opposition leaders are now concentrating on collecting signatures for a petition for a constitutional amendment that could cut short the president's six-year term.

Former U.S. president Jimmy Carter proposed a similar plan while attending negotiations between the government and opposition last week. The former president's Atlanta-based Carter Center, along with the United Nations and the Organization of American States, are co-sponsoring the talks.

President Chavez, in an interview published Saturday in a Canadian newspaper (La Presse of Montreal), called the Carter proposals "interesting" but not necessarily new ideas that should be discussed with the democratic opposition. Opposition leaders blame the country's worsening economic woes on Chavez policies and remain determined to see him leave office. The strike has paralyzed Venezuela's oil production, the mainstay of its economy, and pushed up global oil prices.