A Venezuelan air force general rejected the authority of President Nicolas Maduro Saturday, becoming the highest-ranking military officer to recognise opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country's acting president.
The crack in the military's united front behind Maduro came as Guaido was mobilizing a mass protest in Caracas to back his call for Maduro's resignation and early elections.
Dressed in full uniform, Major General Francisco Yanez appeared on a video posted on social media to declare his support for Guaido, the National Assembly head who has led the most serious challenge yet to Maduro's rule.
"I address you to inform you that I disavow the vitiated and dictatorial authority of Nicolas Maduro and recognize Deputy Juan Guaido as the president in charge of Venezuela," he said.
Yanez, who is strategic planning director of the air force high command, asserted that "90 per cent of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces is not with the dictator, it's with the Venezuelan people."
Yanez claimed that members of the presidential air crew had confided to him that "the dictator has two planes ready every day." "May he go!"
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