CARACAS: Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's opponents are betting on the power of the street as they try to force him from office, but their strategy could backfire.
With crisis-racked Venezuela stuck in a downward spiral of hyperinflation, shortages, and violent crime, discontent is on the rise.
Yet the opposition has struggled to get large turnout at its protests -- a cornerstone of its strategy to force authorities to allow a referendum on removing Maduro from power by the end of the year.
The notable exception was on September 1, when an anti-Maduro march drew a million people into the streets of Caracas, according an estimate by organizers, who called it the largest rally in decades.
But dozens of other protests in recent months have rallied only a fraction of that.
On Wednesday, for example, the nationwide follow-up to the September 1 march drew numbers in the thousands. Maduro's supporters staged counter-demonstrations that were just as large.
Small turnout risks feeding into the leftist president's rhetoric that the opposition coalition behind the referendum drive, the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD), is an "isolated" elite that does not represent the people.
Analysts say the challenge for the center-right opposition is to mobilize a broad base, including traditional supporters of "Chavismo" -- the movement named for Maduro's late predecessor and mentor, the socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez.
"Protests will have to be massive and sustained over a period of weeks or months," said analyst Risa Grais-Targow of the New York-based consultancy Eurasia Group.
"And critically, they will have to transcend traditional opposition supporters and include traditional Chavista supporters."
That is something the fragmented opposition coalition MUD has struggled to do.
An umbrella group whose members span the political spectrum, it leans to the center-right but has been riven by divisions.
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