Miss Venezuela has become the latest of the country’s celebrities to speak out against the government of President Maduro.
Keysi Sayago, who will represent Venezuela at the Miss Universe competition later this year, has taken part in several recent opposition demonstrations.
“You cannot remain indifferent about what’s happening,” she said in a speech to hopefuls for her Miss Venezuela crown. “I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Over the past two months there have been near-daily demonstrations against Mr Maduro, who is blamed for ruling like a dictator and presiding over the worst economic crisis in the country’s history. In Caracas officers with tear gas stopped hundreds of demonstrators marching at the weekend.
Ms Sayago, a mechanical engineering graduate, said that national guardsmen had threatened her at one protest. “We had to run away. I’m not OK with that,” she told the pageant contestants in their shimmering gowns.
Advertisement
A student who was badly burnt during a protest last month died of his injuries yesterday. Orlando Figuera, 22, is the 65th fatality since protests began in early April. The demonstrations started after Venezuela’s supreme court, which is loyal to the president, tried to usurp parliament’s powers. Mr Maduro, in what he says is an attempt to defuse the crisis, is creating a “constituent assembly” to redraft the constitution.
The competition to find a successor to Ms Sayago, being held in the northern state of Carabobo, has another political twist — one of the contestants is related to Hugo Chávez.
Andrea Cristina Chávez Sánchez, 23, is the daughter of the late president’s cousin, who was previously the oil and mining minister.
Venezuela holds the record for the most Miss World titles, having won six.