Eighty percent of Venezuela was left in the dark early Friday morning, including the metropolitan area of Caracas, as a result of a massive blackout that the government of Nicolás Maduro attributed to “sabotage against the national electrical system.” The network failure occurred at a time of maximum political tension and in a climate of persecution of opposition leaders who claim the victory of Edmundo González Urrutia in the elections of July 28. The candidate did not attend the third summons of the Prosecutor’s Office, which is investigating him for conspiracy, among other crimes, so it is only a matter of paperwork for the justice system to issue an arrest warrant. Maduro spoke of a “criminal attack.” “I have said it and I repeat it: Calm and sanity, nerves of steel! Desperate fascism attacks the people,” he wrote in a Telegram message.
This is not the first time that Venezuela has suffered a blackout of this nature, which the opposition blames on a lack of investment in infrastructure and corruption. In March 2019, in the midst of the conflict between Maduro and the opposition Juan Guaidó, the last particularly serious one was recorded, recalled by the Minister of Communication, Freddy Náñez. “We experienced it in 2019, we know what it cost us, we know what it has cost us to recover the national electrical system since then and today we are facing it with the anti-coup protocols, because that is what has existed in Venezuela since before July 28.” [día de las elecciones]during July 28 and these little more than 30 days that have passed,” he said.
Diosdado Cabello, one of the top leaders of Chavismo and recently appointed Minister of Interior and Justice, assured that the Government will do “justice” and gave some details of the system’s failure. He said that the Executive already had information about alleged “attacks” and that “little by little,” without giving an approximate time frame for its resolution, the system would be reactivated. At noon the outage had still not been resolved.
The blackout occurred despite the so-called “special plan for 24-hour patrol and surveillance” of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) in “all electrical installations” launched at the end of June by order of Maduro, who then denounced that “groups of the fascist extreme right” were preparing an “electrical war” to “harm” the country. The Minister of Defense, Vladimir Padrino López, activated the so-called “Plan Centella,” which is basically a deployment of public transportation so that citizens can travel to their workplaces. “We have put into practice the Plan Centella, that is a plan that we have to cover any situation at a national level. In this case of transportation and patrol, we have taken out all motorized units, trucks, tactical and non-tactical vehicles, civilians, to support the people in their movement,” said the Chvavista leader to the state channel VTV.
Large areas and several cities in Venezuela are suffering from frequent power outages that, in some cases, last up to a week before being resolved, according to reports from users in various inland regions and working-class areas of Caracas on a regular basis. The government, however, always insists on the thesis of an attempted “coup d’état.”
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