CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Venezuela’s Opposition voted Thursday to sack the food minister for shortages in the country’s economic crisis and claimed big support for a referendum on driving President Nicolas Maduro from power.

Lawmakers approved a no-confidence motion against the minister, the latest offensive in their battle to replace the government over a crisis that has families queuing up for food rations.

“We are facing the worst food emergency in Venezuela’s history,” said the lawmaker leading the motion, Ismael Garcia. He said the crisis was due to the “failure of an economic model which has ruined the country.”

Government opponents, meanwhile, said they had gathered more than triple the 200,000 signatures needed to begin organising a referendum to remove Maduro.

The socialist president looked likely to resist both measures.

He has already blocked several bills brought by the Opposition by challenging them in the Supreme Court, which his critics say he controls.

The speaker of the Opposition-controlled National Assembly, Henry Ramos Allup, said the government must remove Food Minister Rodolfo Marco Torres from his post after two-thirds of the lawmakers present approved a no-confidence motion against him.

The pro-government bloc in the legislature dismissed the vote as invalid on procedural grounds.

The political tension, shortages and now enforced electricity blackouts that started this week have raised fears of unrest in the South American oil State.

Looting and clashes were reported in various towns including the country’s second-biggest city Maracaibo after daily power cut-offs were formally launched on Monday.

To save power the government has also slashed the workweek to two days for state employees and ordered schools to close on Fridays.

It says the El Nino weather phenomenon has dried up the country’s hydroelectric dams.

The opposition says mismanagement is also to blame for the power crisis as well as for the shortage of food and basic supplies.

In the no-confidence debate, opposition lawmakers said Torres had overseen corruption and ruined Venezuela’s production capacity.

Once-booming Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, has plunged into economic chaos as global crude prices have collapsed.

Maduro blames the situation on an “economic war” against the country by capitalists. He has vowed to press on with the socialist “revolution” launched by his late predecessor Hugo Chavez in 1999.

The opposition has been pushing to drive Maduro from office since it took control of the legislature in January.

Enrique Marquez, the deputy speaker of the legislature, said more than 600,000 people had signed a petition calling for a recall referendum — more than triple the number required to proceed to the next stage of the process.

He said the signatures would be handed over to the National Electoral Board (CNE) early next week for verification.

The opposition will then have to collect four million more signatures for the electoral board to call a referendum.

It is racing to do so by the end of the year. After January, a successful recall vote would just transfer power to Maduro’s vice president rather than trigger new elections.

Analysts and politicians have warned that public discontent could lead to mass unrest in the country, which is already ranked by the United Nations as one of the most violent in the world.

“The CNE will use delay tactics to stop a recall vote from occurring since, beginning in January 2017, chavismo can push Maduro aside without an election,” said analysts at the Eurasia Group consultancy in a note on Wednesday.

“The only catalyst for regime change this year is a potential social explosion that would trigger a disorderly transition that leads to new elections.”