Venezuela’s plunge into a dictatorship did not start yesterday when its corrupt Supreme Court stripped the National Assembly of all its legislative powers. The transformation of Venezuela from a democracy to a dictatorship started years ago when Hugo Chavez gave Cuba’s Castro regime full control of the country. After Chavez’s death, the transformation continued uninterrupted with Cuba’s insertion of its puppet dictator Nicolas Maduro.
The real news today about the Venezuelan government’s steady metamorphosis into a tyrannical regime is that it has now become a full blown, Cuba-style dictatorship.
Venezuela Supreme Court Assumes Powers of Opposition-Controlled Congress
Lawyers, rights activists call move step toward dictatorship
Julio Borges, President of the National Assembly, tears up a copy of a ruling by Venezuela’s Supreme Court at a news conference in Caracas on Thursday.
CARACAS, Venezuela—Venezuela‘s Supreme Court has assumed all powers of the opposition-controlled congress, a move lawyers and rights activists said amounted to the effective dissolution of the legislature in Latin America’s largest oil producer.
“This ruling marks the point of no return for the dictatorship,” National Assembly Vice President Freddy Guevara said. Assembly President Julio Borges called the act a coup and urged Venezuelans to rally on Saturday to defend the country’s democracy.
The Supreme Court, which is packed with allies of President Nicolás Maduro, ruled late Wednesday that the congress was in contempt of court for having sworn in three lawmakers from the remote Amazonas state whom the ruling party had accused of electoral fraud. The court said it takes over all “parliamentary capacities” until the conflict is resolved.
“Maduro now has all powers in his hands, without any checks and balances,” Mr. Borges said. “This is the action of a desperate man who knows the whole world is turning against him.”
Several opposition lawmakers who tried to enter the Supreme Court building Thursday afternoon were blocked by soldiers in riot gear and manhandled by government supporters shouting “get out.”
Peru’s President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski called the court’s action unacceptable and recalled his country’s ambassador to Venezuela on Thursday. In Washington, the secretary-general of the Organization of American States called for an urgent meeting of member states to discuss “the subversion of democratic order” in Venezuela.
Venezuela’s opposition won overwhelming control of the assembly in December 2015, in a victory it called the first step toward ending almost two decades of rule by a far-left movement created by the late Hugo Chávez.
Since then, however, Mr. Maduro has marshaled allied judges and prosecutors to jail dozens of opposition officials and activists, torpedo a recall referendum on the president, and indefinitely postpone all scheduled elections for posts ranging from state governors to labor union heads.
Mr. Maduro’s ruling United Socialist Party, or PSUV, never presented any evidence of wrongdoing by the three opposition lawmakers, and government-appointed prosecutors still haven’t requested voting data 16 months after the start of an investigation, according to electoral officials.
The probe’s only real result to date has been to throw the National Assembly into legal limbo, allowing Mr. Maduro to gradually strip it of its powers.
Meanwhile, the country’s economy plunged around 15% last year alone and inflation has reached more than 400%, worsening already acute food and medicine shortages.
Wednesday’s ruling came a day after most OAS members criticized Venezuela for postponing elections and holding political prisoners. The body also voted to seek diplomatic solutions to the country’s deepening economic and political crisis.
Mr. Maduro accused the OAS of seeking to foment a coup and vowed to prosecute opposition supporters of his international critics as traitors.
Wednesday’s ruling took away the assembly’s power to draft laws, effectively dissolving it, said Rocío San Miguel, a lawyer at human-rights group Citizens’ Control.
The ruling marks the first time a Latin American ruler has eliminated a government branch since Alberto Fujimori dissolved Peru’s congress in 1992, according to Michael Shifter, head of Washington-based policy group Inter-American Dialogue. Mr. Fujimori is now in jail.
“This is despotic rule,” Mr. Shifter said. “There is absolutely no counterweighting [to Mr. Maduro].”
Until now, Venezuela’s congress had at least been permitted to go about debating, voting and approving laws, even if they were all turned back by the Supreme Court, said José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director at Human Rights Watch. He called what happened Wednesday “an open decision to take full control of congress.”
Hours before the OAS meeting, the Supreme Court stripped congressmen of immunity and asked the government to prosecute lawmakers who have backed anti-Maduro initiatives for treason in closed courts.
To many Venezuelans, the ruling is the final nail to the fading hopes that swept the country after the congressional elections that the government could be changed and the economy stabilized.
“All our faith now rests with the international community,” said Orlando Méndez, a taxi driver in the western state of Mérida who said he supported the government before voting for the opposition in 2015. “Only they can force Maduro to call elections.”
Mr. Borges said the Assembly would continue to draft laws and support international critics of Mr. Maduro.
“Our struggle together with international solidarity will ensure that there will be elections in Venezuela,” he said.
Wednesday’s momentous court ruling came out unexpectedly around 10 p.m. after a regular daily meeting of the constitutional high judges. The key line laying out the congressional takeover was buried toward the end of a 20,000-word ruling interpreting a minor point of an oil law.
The ruling also gave Mr. Maduro powers to form joint ventures for oil production in Venezuela without congressional approval. In the past few months Venezuela’s government has been negotiating several sales of stakes in oil-and-gas projects to Russia’s state-run Rosneft and local businessmen, in a bid to scrape together funds for about $8 billion in upcoming bond payments, according to industry executives and opposition politicians.
Mr. Borges said all new contracts would be null and void after Mr. Maduro leaves power.
—José de Córdoba and Juan Forero contributed to this article.
Appeared in the Mar. 31, 2017, print edition as ‘Venezuela’s Congress Is Stripped of Its Powers.’
1 thought on “Venezuela plunges into a full blown, Cuba-style dictatorship”
I regret to inform the Venezuelan people that they have now become a byword for idiots. Not that Cubans aren’t also, in their way, but their deceiver was far harder to see through at first, and he even had the full backing of the Great Wizard of Gotham, aka the New York Times. Unlike Hugo the Ape, he had no known affiliation to any totalitarian dictatorship and vehemently denied being communist or socialist. Also, people who knew the score up, down and sideways did not materialize to warn Cubans of what kind of fire they were playing with, and Venezuelans were warned and simply blew it off–not just like idiots but like arrogant, delusional morons. Way to go.
I regret to inform the Venezuelan people that they have now become a byword for idiots. Not that Cubans aren’t also, in their way, but their deceiver was far harder to see through at first, and he even had the full backing of the Great Wizard of Gotham, aka the New York Times. Unlike Hugo the Ape, he had no known affiliation to any totalitarian dictatorship and vehemently denied being communist or socialist. Also, people who knew the score up, down and sideways did not materialize to warn Cubans of what kind of fire they were playing with, and Venezuelans were warned and simply blew it off–not just like idiots but like arrogant, delusional morons. Way to go.