There’s no doubt that the Opposition in Venezuela is smelling blood, especially after President Nicolás Maduro, via a skyped news conference last Tuesday, appealed to the world to support his Government as the economic crisis in his country deepens.

According to President Maduro, who was scheduled to arrive here last night, the Opposition’s demand for a referendum to recall him is “not viable” and he has accused the United States of playing a role in the crisis gripping his oil-producing country.

Mr Maduro also said that Washington had “imperial” designs on Venezuela, and claimed that a US AWACS surveillance plane had twice violated Venezuela’s airspace last week.

He went even further last week, accusing Organisation of American States (OAS) Secretary General Luis Almagro of being a tool of the United States Central Intelligence Agency and claimed that right-wing leaders in the region are generating chaos in order to pave the way for a US “imperialist” intervention in Venezuela.

Those, though, are old tactics utilised by mostly socialist and communist political leaders in an attempt to reverse their flagging popularity and deflect public attention from the economic and social mess created by their policies.

What President Maduro apparently wants Venezuelans to ignore is the fact that inflation in his country, already the fastest in the world, averaged 159 per cent in 2015 and, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was projected to increase to 204 per cent this year.

The IMF, in its World Economic Outlook released last October, also reported that the bolivar has slumped to 792 to the US dollar on the black market.

It is not surprising, therefore, that given that kind of economic performance and the fact that against the backdrop of the falling price of oil Venezuelans are experiencing power cuts, shortages of food, medicine, and basic goods, opinion polls are showing that a majority of the country wants to see the back of President Maduro.

That much was clear in last December’s congressional elections which saw the Opposition taking the majority of the seats in the legislature.

But State institutions have blocked the Opposition-controlled Congress from passing any legislation, and President Maduro, in what can only be described as a desperate bid to cling to power, has declared a state of emergency to allow him to deal with the economy by decree and, according to him “confront all the international and national threats”.

The upshot is that the Opposition have been galvanising support on the streets. The Venezuelan Observatory of Social Conflict has reported that in the first four months of this year the country saw 2,138 protests, that works out to about 17 each day, and more than 166 looting incidents.

That is not a healthy environment for any country, and President Maduro, if he has any sense of patriotism, needs to address the issues, not in his usual iron-fisted response to dissent but with respect for democracy.

This is what we expect Caricom, which has been strangely silent on this issue, to tell Mr Maduro, especially since the region embraced him and his equally oppressive predecessor Hugo Chavez.

We look to a brighter day for Venezuelans, especially as they have been a good friend to us through the PetroCaribe Fund.