Venezuela Power Outage: Maduro Says Electric System Damaged By Cyber Attacks

Venezuelan President, Nicolas Maduro, and the ruling Socialist Party staged a march on Saturday to rival the rally led by Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido earlier in the day.

Several thousand people, mostly state workers clad in red shirts and red baseball caps, banging drums and dancing salsa attended the government-backed event in Caracas.

Maduro told the crowd that recent power outages were due to attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government. The opposition, along with power experts, blame the blackouts on the government’s incompetence at maintaining the network and corrupt officials who have pocketed billions of dollars allocated to develop it.

Guaido, head of the opposition-controlled National Assembly and recognized as Venezuela’s legitimate head of state by most Western nations, had called for rallies on Saturday to mark the start of what he has billed as a new wave of “definitive” protests to oust Maduro.