Venezuelan opposition takes reins of National Assembly

Maduro also scoffed at recent remarks made by U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby, who had expressed worry that Maduro’s government would “interfere with the newly elected National Assembly exercising its constitutionally mandated duties”.

Confrontational politician Henry Ramos Allup will head Venezuela’s congress when the opposition takes control of the body next week.

The new president of Venezuela’s opposition-controlled congress called on the country’s armed forces to ensure new members’ safe entry to the legislative chamber Tuesday after socialist government activists had barred him from entering the building a day earlier.

They have vowed to bring change to the oil-rich but crisis-hit nation.

The addition of the three deputies would restore the opposition’s so-called supermajority of 112 seats in the 167-seat National Assembly and give it widespread powers to oppose Maduro’s government.

The Democratic Unity Roundtable, or MUD, won 112 seats – a two-thirds majority that theoretically awards it significant powers to challenge the rule of President Nicolas Maduro and his Socialist Party, the PSUV, which on December 6. took 55 seats.

The United States said on Monday that it was anxious about what it called the Venezuelan government’s interference in the assembly. Outgoing lawmakers appointed new members to the Supreme Court, which they hope will counter opposition legislation.

What unites the two factions is an agenda of probing government corruption and freeing opposition figures that they and many human rights groups consider political prisoners.

“Those people are not legislators… a conflict of powers is coming”, former assembly President Diosdado Cabello, who is the ruling Socialist Party’s No. 2, told reporters, adding that the matter would return to the Supreme Court.

Maduro said the pro-government deputies in the assembly would be led by the “Homeland Bloc”.

The move enraged the opposition, which called it an attempt by judges loyal to President Nicholas Maduro to undermine the opposition’s landslide victory in legislative elections.

Ramos, 72, is secretary general of the Democratic Action party, one that is seen by critics as representing the old guard of Venezuelan politics that Hugo Chavez successfully rallied against when elected to the presidency in 1998.

“Chávez leads in heaven and Nicolás leads on earth”, chanted Maduro supporters who gathered in a plaza adjacent to the National Assembly.

The government side insisted any legislation passed with the votes of the suspended deputies would be null.

Venezuela has the world’s biggest known oil reserves but has suffered from a fall in the price of the crude on which its government relies.

While the outlook of Venezuela’s foreign affairs may change in years to come, a major shift in the status of the Essequibo dispute is very unlikely.

One of the opposition’s key economic aims was to try to overhaul the central bank amid triple-digit inflation, recession and widespread shortages.