CARACAS – Venezuela is nearing a showdown, with President Nicolás Maduro vowing to install a new constituent assembly that will trump every other branch of government and opposition leaders calling for a mass protest to ensure delegates know their arrival is unwelcome.
The first meeting of the 545 delegates is expected to convene Friday at the legislative palace in Caracas — only yards from the room where the opposition-controlled National Assembly holds its sessions.
The legislative palace has been witness to bloody clashes in recent weeks and Friday’s installation of the all-powerful assembly, which Maduro has vowed to use to strip opposition lawmakers of their constitutional immunity, sets the stage for an intensified power struggle. Opposition lawmakers in congress have vowed they will only be removed by force.
Why you should care about the crisis in Venezuela https://t.co/Rs0mZ6Eu7L pic.twitter.com/SiBb2YQf2F
— CNN International (@cnni) August 3, 2017
“The only way they’ll get us out of here is by killing us,” declared Freddy Guevara, the National Assembly’s first vice president. “They will never have the seat that the people of Venezuela gave us.”
Sunday’s election of the constituent assembly has come under mounting scrutiny after the CEO of an international voting technology company said Wednesday that “without any doubt” the voter turnout numbers had been tampered with — accusations that Maduro and the National Electoral Council have dismissed. A growing list of foreign nations has refused to recognize the assembly and many within Venezuela fear its installation will open a dark chapter in the nation’s history.
“There has been a gradual erosion of democratic practice and this is a significant line that has been crossed,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based think tank Inter-American Dialogue. “To attach the term democracy to Venezuela with this new constituent assembly is on very weak ground.”
Prominent constituent assembly members like Diosdado Cabello, the leader of the ruling socialist party, have said they plan to target the opposition-controlled congress and the country’s chief prosecutor, Luisa Ortega Díaz, a longtime supporter of the late Hugo Chávez who recently broke with Maduro. As one of its first tasks, Maduro has ordered the assembly to declare Ortega Díaz’s office in a state of emergency and entirely restructure it.
In a continuing show of defiance, Ortega Díaz filed a court order Thursday demanding that the installation of the new assembly be halted. The request, filed to a lower court in an apparent attempt to circumvent the government-stacked Supreme Court, was almost certain to be denied.
Farewell democracy: After nearly two decades of populist leftwing rule, Venezuela is turning into a new Cuba https://t.co/Bt3c4TOBQh pic.twitter.com/C2FxImx6KA
— Financial Times (@FT) August 3, 2017
She also ordered prosecutors to investigate the allegations of election tampering raised by Antonio Mugica, the head of the voting technology firm Smartmatic. Mugica told reporters in London on Wednesday that results recorded by his company’s systems and those reported by the National Electoral Council show the official turnout count was off by at least 1 million votes.
Pledges by opposition lawmakers to remain in power no matter what action the constituent assembly takes have opened the possibility of two governing bodies operating side-by-side — neither recognizing the other.
One opposition lawmaker, Henry Ramos Allup, said this week that if forcibly expelled from the legislative palace the National Assembly could potentially hold its sessions at another site.
Anti-government leaders are calling on Venezuelans to protest Friday just as the new constituent assembly members take office.
The National Electoral Council said 8 million Venezuelans voted in the election, though independent analysts and opposition leaders contend the turnout was almost certainly less than half that figure.
Venezuela’s president defiantly dismissed those allegations, telling the new constituent members on Wednesday that he not only stood by the official count, but believed another 2 million people would have voted if not blocked by anti-government protesters.
With the opposition boycotting the election, virtually all the candidates were supporters of Maduro’s ruling socialist party, so turnout was watched as one of the only indicators of how much popular support there is for the constituent assembly.
Venezuela jails opposition leaders Antonio Ledezma & Leopoldo Lopez.@UN_HRC Plenary: Silence.@UN_HRC‘s 79 human rights experts: Silence. pic.twitter.com/9vGSOA8f8c
— UN Watch (@UNWatch) August 3, 2017
Mugica said his company’s automated election system is designed to show when results are manipulated but requires that a large number of auditors participate, from both the ruling and opposition parties, which he said did not happen during Sunday’s vote.
“This would not have occurred if the auditors of all political parties had been present at every stage of the election,” he said.
Smartmatic, which supplies services worldwide, was founded by Venezuelans in Caracas and began providing voting technology during Chávez’s presidency. In the past, opposition members have questioned the validity of results, but the firm has maintained its impartiality.
Despite questions surrounding the vote, Maduro has all but ensured there is nothing that can stop the government from seating the new delegates.
“They are bent on plowing ahead with this power grab,” Shifter said, “and this is not going to stand in the way.”
FABIOLA SANCHEZ
CHRISTINE ARMARIO
