A young left-wing German politician has admitted she lied to police about the racial background of three men who raped her in case it triggered reprisals against refugees in her country.

Selin Gören, the national spokeswoman of the left-wing youth movement Solid, was attacked by three men in January in the city of Mannheim where she works as a refugee activist.

The 24-year-old was ambushed late at night in a playground where she said she was forced to perform a sex act on her attackers.

She said a friend talked her into going back to the police with the real story because another woman had been raped in the area - an accusation later retracted by the alleged victim.

The outlook for Venezuela appears to be dimming every day, and it's not just because of the country's daily four-hour mandatory blackouts.

The oil-exporting South American country is caught in a perfect storm of droughts, food and power shortages, and devastating inflation and recession caused by plummeting crude prices.

While Maduro has blamed the downturn on an "economic war" he claims is being waged against his government by the political opposition, the private sector and Washington, his critics have slammed the president for sticking to Chavez's socialist blueprint instead of embracing free-market reforms.

"Within 2½ years, Maduro has taken an unsustainable [economic] model and just ridden it right off a cliff," David Smilde, a senior fellow and Venezuela expert with the Washington Office on Latin America, previously told CBC News.

"People are having a very difficult time."

Maduro blames the drought on the El Nino weather phenomenon, but his critics say rationing could have been prevented had the government invested in maintenance and in the construction of thermoelectric plants — power stations that generate electricity with heat energy.

Maduro has tried to reduce the country's consumption by cutting back the work week to just two days for 2.5 million public sector employees, instituting four-hour-long daily blackouts across the country, reducing hours in over 100 shopping malls and urging women to stop blow-drying their hair.

"I always think a woman looks better when she just runs her fingers through her hair and lets it dry naturally," Maduro said in April. "It's just an idea I have."

The floundering economy has resulted in a shortage of basic supplies like food and medicine.

Teacher Becky Jordan says you have to wait in line for hours for a loaf of bread, and live without essentials like soap and toothpaste.

"Daily life has become increasingly challenging, difficult, frustrating, even humiliating," Jordan said.

The government only allows people to shop one day a week at state-run supermarkets, with the day pre-determined by ID number.

Food shortages have also contributed to a decline in the education system.

According to the Venezuela Teacher's Federation, children have missed an average of 40 per cent of class time because a third of teachers skip work on any given day to wait in food lines.

Helena Porras, a school director in Caracas, has asked nearby supermarkets to let teachers cut in line and has disciplined staff for selling students passing grades in exchange for scarce goods like milk and flour.

Until recently, Venezuela's schools were among the best in South America, and the late Chavez made education a centrepiece of his socialist revolution.

But now teachers are fleeing the country, the annual dropout rate has doubled and more than a quarter of teenagers are not enrolled in school.

With polls indicating 70 per cent of Venezuelans want him out, the odds would be against Maduro in a recall. But if the vote were delayed until next year and he were to lose, he would be replaced by his hand-picked vice-president and the Socialist Party would keep power until the 2019 election.