CARACAS: Venezuela’s angry opposition is pushing for a boycott of an upcoming vote that it dismisses as a ploy by President Nicolas Maduro to cling to power.

Ahead of next Sunday’s election for a 500-plus member assembly to rewrite the constitution and give the president more power, the opposition also plans a general strike — the second in weeks — on Wednesday and Thursday and a big protest march on Friday.It all makes for a dramatic week in the opposition’s dogged drive to unseat the socialist Maduro, whom it blames for an acute economic crisis marked by shortages of food, medicine and such basics as diapers, soap and toilet paper.

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