Maduro and Guaido set for humanitarian aid showdown

REUTERS | Marco Bello TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido, who many nations have recognized as the country’s rightful interim ruler, reacts during a meeting with volunteers to coordinate humanitarian aid in Caracas, Venezuela February 16, 2019.

Venezuela’s opposition lawmakers are forging ahead with plans to confront a government blockade that has kept tens of millions of dollars in humanitarian aid, mostly supplied by the U.S., from flowing into the country.

It comes at a time when tensions in Venezuela are reaching boiling point, with the South American country in the midst of the Western Hemisphere’s worst humanitarian crisis in recent memory.

On Saturday, hundreds of thousands of volunteers are expected to help National Assembly leader Juan Guaido bring in food supplies, hygiene kits and nutritional supplements.

The aid plan is scheduled to take place exactly one month to the day after Guaido took to the streets of Caracas and declared himself as the crisis-stricken country’s rightful interim president.

President Nicolas Maduro has refused to cede power, however, and still has the support of the military. He has consistently rejected letting foreign aid into Venezuela, calling it a “political show” and a cover for a U.S. invasion.

“We have managed to build the biggest voluntary movement of our nation and it will be the most important that this continent will see,” Carlos Paparoni, an opposition lawmaker and head of the National Assembly’s finance committee, told CNBC via telephone.

“This is a country where everyone is afraid of the crisis. This is a country where sick people are scared because they don’t have the medicines they need… where kids die from dehydration… (and) where more and more people search in the garbage for food.”

“This is what we are afraid of, that this keeps on,” Paparoni said.