During a televised speech today, Maduro warned the United States that the Venezuelan people “cannot be defeated”, and that the latest alleged coup against him had been successfully defeated. Maduro spoke from an event to inaugurate Gran Abasto Bicentenario in Valles del Tuy, south of Caracas. Maduro said:
They used to say that [the government wouldn’t survive] through 2014. That’s why they went nuts in December and started with all this craziness that we’ve denounced and defeated. We’ve peacefully defeated the 2015 coup d’etat, which began with the economic ambush.
At the same event, Maduro said that the Venezuelan opposition was against the idea of having the country receive food and logistical aid from other South American countries:
As it turns out, the opposition reacted the same way a vampire does when you show him a crucifix. They started yelling, shrieking, and complained to [UNASUR] Secretary General Samper: ‘What do you mean South America will come to help Venezuela?’ The opposition! Can you believe that someone can be opposed to us receiving help?
Supermarket Fingerprint Scanners Ready for Roll-Out
Maduro announced today that a much-awaited fingerprint scanner system will start to be installed in supermarkets around the country starting on Monday. A total of 20,000 scanners will eventually track the basic necessity purchases made by Venezuelans. The government argues that the point of the system is to make sure that people are not hoarding products.
Just like we defeated electoral fraud, political fraud, we are going to defeat economic fraud, commercial fraud. We have to defeat it. I ask all Venezuelans to understand the problem because there’s a lot of manipulation.
He also said that national production had to be “multiplied”, and that there were “no excuses” for not doing so:
We have to multiply production. I call on the vice-president of Nutritional Sovereignty and Security, Carlos Osorio, to get to work on this.
Finally, Maduro declared that the time for sacrifice had come, and urged every Venezuelan to work hard to help bring the country out of the crisis:
Just as I’m calling on the private sector, I call on our workers. The time for work and production has come. The time for sacrifice to build our homeland has come, to provide our service to the people.
UNASUR: Dialogue Possibility “Remains Open”
UNASUR Secretary General Ernesto Samper said after a meeting with government and opposition officials in Venezuela that the possibility for dialogue between the two sides was still alive.
The last time the two sides officially met together to try to bring a diplomatic solution to the rift between them was in May of last year. Weeks of nation-wide protests had left dozens of Venezuelans dead by the time, but the negotiations ended abruptly without any resolution.
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