Defiant Venezuela opposition claims congress supermajority

Lawmaker Diosdado Cabello, the previous president of the National Assembly, uses his cell phone during the first session of the legislature in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016. Rodolfo Medina was named finance minister, and Jesús Faria, a former legislator and Communist Party leader, became the minister in charge of foreign investment.

According to PSUV lawmakers, this represents a violation of the constitution, and that decisions made by the National Assembly while the suspended deputies are seated will be void.

Before the new National Assembly convened, the government eliminated its control over the central bank.

Maduro on Wednesday appointed a young socialist as economic czar as part of a larger cabinet reshuffle.

Indeed, Ramos Allup, the assembly’s newly elected speaker, declared on January 5 that there would be a change of government within six months.

Irked by this week’s unceremonious removal of the giant Chavez photos from Congress, his successor President Nicolas Maduro had them displayed in a Caracas plaza under military guard and officials vowed to plaster the country with more.

The opposition won a super-majority of two thirds in legislative elections in December, but the Supreme Court granted injunctions against the three, all from the jungle state of Amazonas, after allegations of irregularities.

“The president’s support for the radical ideological wing of Chavismo, sidelining pragmatists, does not generate positive expectations for change”, said analyst Luis Vicente Leon, head of polling firm Datanalisis.

Maduro responded in comments broadcast on television: “I will be there to defend democracy with an iron hand”.

Facing a “new stage of the Revolution” and a “bourgeois legislature”, Maduro said his new cabinet team would work on the “grave economic situation” and retool his party’s policies.

Under Venezuelan law, with a two-thirds majority, the opposition could from April launch measures to try to force Maduro from office before his term ends in 2019.

But it was not clear whether they will succeed while at odds with the Supreme Court, which is seen as allied with the government.

Venezuela is grappling with triple-digit inflation and the world’s worst recession, in addition to chronic shortages that compel people to spend their days waiting in food lines.

“I have received calls from across the country, social leaders, governors, political leaders, lawmakers from the Homeland Bloc, soldiers, I have received calls of outrage at what Mr. Ramos Allup has done to our liberator Simon Bolivar, expelling him from the National Assembly”, said President Nicolas Maduro.