Hard-line rightwinger Leopoldo Lopez’s Popular Will party released a prerecorded video yesterday inciting his supporters to turn out on the streets in protest at his arrest.

Mr Lopez surrendered to Venezuelan security forces on Tuesday after addressing a rally against President Nicolas Maduro’s government.

The Harvard-educated economist was taken into an armoured vehicle after giving a speech to an opposition rally in Caracas.

“I have nothing to hide,” he claimed to his supporters.

“I present myself to an unjust judiciary. They want to jail Venezuelans who want peaceful, democratic change.”

Mr Lopez, who is detained on charges including murder and terrorism, claims he is being made a scapegoat by the government.

He has embarked on an inflammatory campaign of violent street protest in an attempt to supplant rival opposition leader Hector Capriles, who is wary of confronting the organised working-class supporters of the government.

Protest numbers, though, are smaller than mass movements in other countries, with little sign of Venezuelans joining en masse.

Nor has there been any evidence Venezuela’s military might turn against Mr Maduro.

“The armed forces will always be on the side of justice and development,” Defence Minister Carmen Melendez said.

And many thousands of oil workers and Maduro supporters, clad in the red of the ruling Socialist Party, held their own demonstration on Tuesday.

“Comrade President Nicolas Maduro can count on the working class,” oil union leader Wills Rangel told the crowd.

“Chavez lives, the fight goes on,” the thousands of Maduro backers responded.