CARACAS – Two lawmakers from Venezuela’s Democratic Action party are missing and thought to have been kidnapped, party leader Edgar Zambrano said Tuesday.

Orlando Espinoza and Lisbeth Parra, both members of the legislature in the central state of Aragua, disappeared after taking part Sunday afternoon in a TV news program of the Globovision network in Caracas.

“They still haven’t appeared. I think it’s the work of common criminals, because neither of the two... are so emblematic that they would be attacked for political reasons,” Zambrano, who heads the AD bloc in Venezuela’s National Assembly, told Efe.

The police “told us again this Tuesday that they are investigating the matter but there is nothing new to report,” he said.

Globovision aired a statement by Antonio Ecarri, AD’s national vice president, who said that on the news show Espinoza and Parra made “serious denunciations about the national electric system.”

“If they were kidnapped, no one has made contact asking for any kind of a ransom,” Ecarri said.

Globovision said on its Web site that after leaving the program, Espinoza and Parra “made a telephone call from Plaza Venezuela to say they were headed back to Aragua state – but since then their whereabouts has remained unknown.” EFE