Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro yesterday was to install a new assembly of his allies, dismissing an international outcry and opposition protests saying he is burying democracy in the nation.
The Constituent Assembly, elected last weekend in a vote marred by violence and allegations of fraud, is to sit in a chamber in the Legislative Palace in Caracas, where the opposition-controlled legislature is located.
The inaugural session of its 500-plus members — who include Maduro’s wife and son — was to take place under high tension.
Photo: Reuters
The opposition has called a mass march in the capital, raising fears of violence that could add to a death toll of more than 125 over the past four months.
“Let there be no provocations, nor should people fall into provocations,” Maduro said late on Thursday.
The body marks a new stage in Venezuela’s rule.
With unlimited powers to dissolve the National Assembly or amend laws, the new body is tasked with rewriting the 1999 constitution brought in under former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
Maduro said its work would lift Venezuela out of its worsening spiral of political and economic crisis, though he has not detailed how.
Nor has he given an end date for the Constituent Assembly, which he said would operate for years.
The body is being challenged on several fronts.
Backing opposition allegations of fraud, Smartmatic, a British-based company involved in the vote technology behind the election on Sunday last week, said the official turnout figure had been tampered with and exaggerated by at least 1 million voters.
Although brushed off by Maduro as part of a plot by “the international enemy,” that gave grounds for Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega to order an investigation.
Ortega said prosecutors had lodged court cases seeking to have the Constituent Assembly annulled, although few in Venezuela believed that would be achieved.
The Venezuelan Supreme Court has systematically sided with the president in blocking prosecutorial or legislative gambits against the government.
Using his daily appearances on state television, Maduro has criticized several of the 40 countries that admonished him for seeing through the creation of the new assembly.
After being hit with US sanctions and called a “dictator” by US President Donald Trump, Maduro said that he was standing up to what he called imperialism.
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