Venezuela’s Guaidó held from National Assembly
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó was violently blocked Sunday from presiding over a special session of congress where rivals proclaimed a substitute leader — moves opposition officials condemned as a hijacking of the country’s last democratic institution.
Hours later, however, a majority of congress members held an emergency meeting at an opposition newspaper office and voted to re-elect Guaidó as their leader.
Guaidó — whose legal challenge to the socialist government has been based on his role as head of congress — headed a small group of lawmakers trying to access the neoclassical palace where the opposition-controlled National Assembly was set to elect its leader.
But they were pushed back by national guardsmen wielding heavy riot shields. As scuffles broke out, the U.S.-backed leader tried to mount an iron fence surrounding the legislature, only to be repelled again.
Inside, the situation was similarly rowdy, as a rival slate headed by lawmaker Luis Parra were sworn in as legislative leaders. Opposition leaders immediately denounced the session as a “show” carried out by a group of “traitors” in cahoots with President Nicolás Maduro.
Hours later, 100 of the legislature’s 167 members voted to re-elect Guaidó for the final year of the Assembly’s 2015-2020 term. Several of the lawmakers who have been forced into exile were represented by alternates at the impromptu session held at the El Nacional newspaper, the last major daily critical of the socialist government.
Still, senior Maduro officials celebrated the gambit as a comeuppance for the 36-year-old lawmaker, who has been struggling to maintain unity in the unwieldy opposition coalition.
“This is what I’ve been dreaming would happen,“Maduro said at an event inaugurating a baseball stadium near Caracas. “The entire country repudiates Juan Guaidó as a puppet of American imperialism.”
Parra, meanwhile, called a session for Tuesday, setting up a fight over the rival claims to the legislature’s leadership in the days ahead.
A year ago, Guaidó asserted at a street demonstration that his position as legislative leader made him Venezuela’s interim president in place of the “usurper” Maduro, whose 2018 reelection has been rejected as invalid by the legislature, as well as by the U.S., European Union and several Latin American governments. Key opposition figures were barred from running in that election.
There was no indication of weakening support among the more than 50 governments that recognize Guaidó as Venezuela’s rightful leader. Brazil’s government called the initial session an “affront to democracy,” while the topranking U.S. diplomat in Latin America called Sunday’s events in the chamber a “farce.”