Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday pledged to hold a referendum on a new constitution he is proposing in response to two months of protests by opponents who call him a dictator and want an end to socialist rule.
“I shall propose it explicitly: The new constitution will go to a consultative referendum so it is the people who say whether they are in agreement or not with the new, strengthened constitution,” Maduro said on state television.
His comments came in response to criticism not just from opponents, but also from within the government, that his plan to create a new super-body, known as a constituent assembly, to rewrite the national charter was anti-democratic.
Chief State Prosecutor Luisa Ortega said that creating the assembly, without a plebiscite as happened in 1999 when then-Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez rewrote the constitution, threatened to “eliminate” democracy in Venezuela.
Ortega launched a blistering attack on Maduro from the steps of the pro-government Venezuelan Supreme Court, criticizing its ruling this week endorsing the assembly plan.
“It seems that participative and protagonistic democracy, which cost Venezuelans so much [to get], is being eliminated,” said Ortega, who broke with Maduro a few weeks ago.
“This sentence is a backward step for human rights,” she said, before reading extracts from a past Chavez speech.
There was no immediate reaction from Venezuela’s opposition, which now has majority support after years in the shadow of the ruling Socialist Party, whose popularity has plunged during the nation’s economic crisis.
Foes are likely to try and turn any referendum into a vote on Maduro himself.
They have been calling for a bringing forward of the next presidential election, slated for late next year.
The government has said elections for the new constituent assembly would be held late next month, although opposition leaders have said the process is skewed to ensure a pro-Maduro majority.
There was no word on when the plebiscite would be held.
Earlier, authorities announced that gunmen had killed a judge involved in the sentencing of Venezuela’s best-known jailed political leader, Leopoldo Lopez, the latest fatality of the anti-government unrest that has left at least 61 people dead.
The judge, 37-year-old Nelson Moncada, was shot and stripped of his belongings as he tried to get away from a street barricade on Wednesday night in Caracas’ El Paraiso District, the scene of regular clashes, the prosecutor’s office said.
This week has seen widespread violence across the Venezuelan capital, with security forces repeatedly breaking up marches by opposition supporters toward government offices downtown, and skirmishes continuing into the night.
Protesters have been blocking roads with trash and burning tires, sometimes asking passersby for contributions toward a self-styled “resistance” movement against Maduro.
The government said Moncada was one of the judges who ratified Lopez’s 14-year jail sentence and suggested that might have motivated his killing.
“We cannot exclude the possibility this was done by hitmen hired by right-wing terrorists to keep creating and spreading terror,” Venezuelan Minister of the Interior Nestor Reverol said, referring to Venezuela’s opposition.
Victims from two months of unrest have included supporters on both sides, bystanders and members of the security forces.
El Paraiso has seen nightly clashes between demonstrators, pro-government gangs and National Guard soldiers.
In further political drama, the Venezuelan Supreme Court on Thursday ordered opposition leader Henrique Capriles to avoid roadblocks in the Miranda state that he governs, or face jail.
Miranda includes part of the capital Caracas, and the volatile towns of San Antonio de Los Altos and Los Teques, where anti-government street barricades have been common.
The 44-year-old lawyer narrowly lost a 2013 vote to Maduro, and has been at the forefront of this year’s protests, calling for civil disobedience.
Authorities have already barred Capriles from running for new political posts for 15 years on allegations of “administrative irregularities” that he denies, potentially hobbling another bid to run next year.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing