Caracas, Nov 28 (EFE).– Venezuela’s Food Minister Carlos Osorio denied that the government’s sale of food at rock-bottom prices beginning Saturday, a week before the legislative elections, could be considered an “election gimmick.”

Opposition candidates are passing the word “on social networks that this operation will last no longer than election day” on Dec. 6, which is “totally false,” the minister and vice president of Food Sovereignty and Security said.

Around 19 million Venezuelan voters on the first Sunday of December will renew the 167 seats of the unicameral National Assembly, and a number of surveys indicate that President Nicolas Maduro will lose majority support for his administration.

From a densely populated district of Caracas, Osorio said during a televised address that the government “is assuring people that the popular Christmas markets being installed today will close on December 26 and not before.”

Accompanied by legislative candidate Jaqueline Farias, a director like he is of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, Osorio said, “As ordered by my commander Maduro, we’re going through all Venezuela to make sure these operations reach every community.”

Osorio noted that just in Caracas and other nearby cities, some “894,000 families, in other words, 3.57 million people,” will benefit from the purchase of very low-priced food products.

The government will sell in the nation’s capital an average of 27,000 tons of food, including 10 tons of pigs’ feet for preparing typical Christmas dishes, he said.

“We know there are areas we haven’t reached yet,” the vice president acknowledged, an apparent reference to protests in areas of the country where people waited since before dawn for the arrival of food trucks, and reacted with outcries and in some cases with barricades to the announcement that food supplies would not get there until next week.

Former lawmaker and anti-Chavism leader Maria Corina Machado said on Twitter that people are protesting in neighborhoods around the country.

“The regime promises 5,000 MegaMarkets and starts the day with nothing…what do they expect? There are protests in Valencia, AvBaralt, Catia, Charallave, Macuto, Coro, Maracay”, the opposition leader said. EFE