Venezuela’s socialists take over assembly
CARACAS, Venezuela — Parading giant portraits of Hugo Chávez and independence hero Simón Bolívar, allies of President Nicolás Maduro retook control of Venezuela’s congress Tuesday, the last institution in the country it didn’t already control.
The symbolic restoring of the images to Venezuela’s parliament capped a celebratory day for the ruling socialist party in which they claimed to have avenged the humiliating defeat five years ago when government opponents won control of the legislature and proceeded to remove portraits of the two national icons in a fierce — if futile — challenge to Maduro’s lock on power.
Jorge Rodríguez, the incoming assembly president, vowed to “exorcise” from the legislative palace all vestiges of its previous occupants, whom he accused of plotting Maduro’s violent overthrow with the help of foreign mercenaries and the Trump administration.
“Just so there are no doubts, pretty soon we’ll spray every corner of the parliamentary chambers with holy water,” joked Rodríguez, who was previously led internationally sponsored talks with the opposition as well as met with envoys from the Trump administration.
Maduro’s allies swept legislative elections last month boycotted by
the opposition and denounced as a sham by the U.S., the European Union and several other foreign governments. While the vote was marred by anemically low turnout, it nonetheless seemed to relegate into irrelevancy the U.S.backed opposition led by lawmaker Juan Guaidó.
Exactly a year ago, Guaidó tried to scale a spiked iron fence to get past riot police blocking him from
attending the parliament’s inaugural session, which according to the constitution must be held every year on Jan. 5.
A far cry from that electric display of defiance, Guaidó held his own virtual parliamentary session Tuesday, via Zoom, with a cohort of opposition leaders.
“They are trying to annihilate Venezuela’s democratic force,” Guaidó said in his online address.
“But we aren’t going to give up.”
Last month, anti-maduro lawmakers, several dozen of them from exile, also gathered online to vote to extend their mandate stemming from a landslide victory in 2015 for another 12 months, operating through an adjunct committee normally reserved for legislative recesses.
Supreme Court justices loyal to Maduro immediately struck down that measure as invalid. But that hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from doubling down in its support of Guaidó.
“We consider this group to be illegitimate and will not recognize it nor its pronouncements,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Tuesday, referring to the pro-maduro assembly. “President Guaidó and the National Assembly are the only democratic representatives of the Venezuelan people as recognized by the international community, and they should be freed from Maduro’s harassment, threats, persecution and other abuses.”
The opposition’s political fortunes have tanked as Venezuelans own hopes for change have collapsed. Recent opinion polls say support for Guaidó has fallen by more than half since he first rose to challenge Maduro two years ago
Meanwhile, Maduro has managed to retain a solid grip on power and the military, the traditional arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela.
Gaby Arellano, a lawmaker exiled in Colombia, said many in the opposition underestimated Maduro, thinking he stood no chance in a doomsday economic environment marked by hyperinflation, miles-long lines for gasoline and pulverized wages worth just a few pennies per month.
She expects a new round of repression now that Maduro has seized congress.