Anger, dissent growing in Venezuela
Electoral council suspends effort to recall president
CARACAS, Venezuela — In what critics blasted as the latest efforts of an embattled government to quash dissent, Venezuela’s electoral council derailed efforts to recall President Nicolas Maduro, and a judge ordered eight prominent opposition leaders not to leave the country, a move that could presage their arrests.
Dissatisfaction with Maduro’s government is widespread due to ongoing scarcities of food, tripledigit inflation and rising violent crime.
A report to be issued Monday by Human Rights Watch is expected to show alarming increases in infant and maternal fatalities in Venezuelan hospitals due to shortages of medical supplies and equipment.
Maduro has responded to dissent with increasingly autocratic measures, including moves to weaken the opposition-controlled National Assembly. Experts have described those moves as unconstitutional.
Those criticisms were leveled again Friday, a day after the National Electoral Council indefinitely suspended the collection of signatures intended to force a recall election to force Maduro from office.
The council’s action came the same day a judge in western Carabobo state issued, without explanation, an order prohibiting the eight opposition leaders, including former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles, from leaving Venezuela.
Capriles ran unsuccessfully against Maduro after the March 2013 death of longtime Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez. Maduro’s term is scheduled to end in April 2019.
Earlier this month, the Maduro-controlled Supreme Court took the unprecedented step of transferring budget-setting power from the National Assembly to Maduro. It was one of more than 20 decisions since the opposition gained a majority in January that the court has steadily stripped the assembly of its constitutional powers.
In interviews with local media Friday, Jose Vicente Haro, a Caracas-based constitutional law expert, said the recall process acts as a “democratic escape valve” and that its suspension by the court is a first in Venezuelan history. The order shows a lack of respect for “the constitution and separation of powers,” he added.
“When this happens there is no democracy.”