Venezuelan socialists took another step to undermine the opposition’s landslide in congressional elections, creating a new grassroots assembly that critics fear could become a vehicle to override the incoming opposition-led legislature.
On Tuesday, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello presided over the inauguration inside the legislative building of the first-ever “National Communal Parliament,” with the aim of giving revolutionary activists a mechanism to make decisions and manage resources.
Cabello did not offer details on how the grassroots assembly, an outgrowth of former Venezueland president Hugo Chavez’s dream of empowering self-administering communal councils, will operate.
Photo: AFP
However, opponents fear it could be an attempt to wrest control from the incoming opposition-controlled congress, much as other central government-created agencies have been entrusted with large budgets operating parallel to defunded districts where opposition politicians govern.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been defiant in the face of the opposition’s winning a two-third supermajority in elections on Sunday last week, vowing to take to the streets to defend the revolution started by Chavez and blaming the loss on an “economic war” waged with US support.
He also shot down several top priorities for the incoming congress, including an amnesty law for jailed activists the opposition considers political prisoners.
In a meeting with grassroots activists, he praised the new legislative initiative, saying: “I’m going to give all the power to the communal parliament.”
“This parliament is going to be a legislative mechanism from the grassroots. All power to the communal parliament,” he said, without giving details.
In another slap to the opposition, lawmakers on Tuesday swore in as the nation’s top public defender Susana Barreiros, the judge who this year sentenced opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez to nearly 14 years in jail.
Cabello is vowing to ram through the appointment of 12 Supreme Court justices to fill vacancies left by pro-government judges, who retired early rather than risk seeing the high court tilt toward the opposition.
The opposition’s sweeping win gives it the power to challenge Maduro’s rule by removing ministers, passing laws without the executive’s support and even convoking an assembly to rewrite Chavez’s 1999 constitution.
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