As Venezuela unrest spreads, Maduro presses on with plans to rewrite charter
CARACAS: Faced with mounting unrest, Venezuela’s unpopular leftist President Nicolas Maduro vowed to push ahead in July with the formation of a “constituent assembly” to rewrite the constitution before regional elections in December.
The South American Opec member has been racked by strife, with 55 people killed during unrest in the past two months as public anger boiled over due to an economic meltdown that has left many Venezuelans scrabbling to afford three meals a day.
In an apparent bid to show the government was seeking a democratic solution, the head of the progovernment electoral council said voting for a controversial “constituent assembly” would be held in late July.
Regional gubernatorial elections, meant to have been held last year, constituent assembly could rewrite would take place on December 10, he rules or exclude opposition parties, said. making a sham of future elections
The opposition reacted with fury, that would likely vanquish the ruling — Thomson Reuters convinced that these moves were socialists if the polls were free and
Foundation Maduro’s way of clinging to power. fair.“Maduro’s rivals fear that a new Today’s decision is nothing more than an evil announcement meant to divide, distract, and confuse Venezuelans further,” said Congress President Julio Borges, the opposition leader whose coalition is pushing for early elections, humanitarian aid to alleviate food and medicine shortages, and freedom for jailed activists.
“Today we’ve entered a new stage and that means more struggle and more street action,” Borges said in a video on Tuesday night.
A Supreme Court magistrate decried the planned assembly, saying it was “not the solution to the crisis” and called on Maduro to “think carefully” to avoid more bloodshed.
Maduro was undaunted on Tuesday, presenting the proposed 540-member “constituent assembly” as a way to defuse anti-government protests, which he says are part of a US-backed conspiracy to overthrow “21st Century socialism.”
“Votes or bullets, what do the people want?” Maduro asked a crowd of redshirted supporters waving Venezuelan flags at the Miraflores presidential palace. “Let’s go to elections now!” he said, before detailing how the new assembly will be partially elected by votes at a municipal level and partially by different groups, including workers, farmers, students, and indigenous people.