Venezuela crisis: military dissent, constituent vote, spillover effects

Venezuela's security forces arrested over a dozen military officials under suspicion of "rebellion" and "treason" in early April, when the daily protests against the government of President Nicolás Maduro began, Reuters is reporting.

The wave of anti-government protests that began on April 1 has so far left 65 people dead as a result of clashes between demonstrators and security forces.

Citing internal documents, Reuters said colonels and captains are among the detainees being held in a military prison outside Caracas.

Meanwhile, the government has set a date to elect a constituent assembly, as part of Maduro's controversial plan to rewrite the constitution that was reformed in 1999 by his late predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chávez. The CNE electoral council said over 55,000 people have registered online to be candidates in the July 30 election.

The MUD opposition coalition has said it will not take part in a process it deems fraudulent. Instead, it has called on its supporters to continue protesting in the streets.

Maduro has said the constitutional reform is the only way to bring peace to the country, despite the fact that his own attorney general, Luisa Ortega Díaz, has asked him to back away from the project due to the fact that it was not brought to a referendum.

In the meantime there is concern that the country's crisis could spill over to other economies in the region.

On Tuesday, Capital Economics warned of significant spillovers to some Central American and Caribbean countries such as Nicaragua and Cuba. A 70% drop in Venezuela's oil revenue since 2013 has led the government to curtail subsidized oil shipments to the 18 energy-importing Caribbean nations in the Petrocaribe group.

The London-based consultancy cited Jamaica's foreign minister as saying the nation is receiving about 5% of the oil it normally would from Venezuela. In 2015, Venezuela's subsidized oil shipments to Petrocaribe were 50% lower than its 2012 peak in volume terms.