VENEZUELA’S President Nicolas Maduro warned the military at the weekend of a “large-scale crisis” brewing and foreshadowing a showdown between the socialist government and opposition-led legislature.

“We’re facing a large-scale crisis that is going to generate a power struggle between two poles — the patriots and the anti-patriots,” the president declared.

“It’s a conflict that is going to create big tensions ... It’s a counter-revolutionary crisis.”

The opposition Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) coalition took a two-thirds majority in the vote for a new national assembly last weekend, giving it a powerful platform to challenge Mr Maduro’s government.

The new national assembly, where revolutionary representation will be reduced to 55 United Socialist Party (PSUV) members and two Communists (PCV), will be sworn in on January 5.

The opposition has given no detailed indication of economic changes it intends to pursue in the wake of its victory.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost presidential contests against revolutionary founder Hugo Chavez and his successor Mr Maduro, said: “We Venezuelans cannot allow ourselves to be distracted. We have to demand solutions to the worst economic and social crisis in our history.”

The counter-revolutionary right is obsessed with demanding an amnesty law for activists jailed for crimes of violence. However, the president has insisted that he will veto any such proposal.

The government has pushed through extra budgetary credits and will make new appointments to the Supreme Court, where potential constitutional disputes between the legislature and executive could be decided.

Mr Maduro told a PSUV conference at the weekend that the nation’s oil revenues had plunged 68 per cent in 2015 because of sliding prices, but without any cuts in social programmes.

“It’s a war, it’s a boycott — 2015 has been a terrible year ... but we will face the difficulties with more revolution,” he emphasised.

PCV leader Oscar Figuera said that an initial party leadership assessment shared Mr Maduro’s approach that it was necessary “to make a collective evaluation of the election result.”

He noted, however, that there had been “inadequate space in the process of change for critical and self-critical evaluation and definition of public policies to advance and deepen unity at the base of the process.”