The visit of Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad distracted attention from some political developments at the heart of the Bolivarian Revolution. President Hugo Chávez announced the appointment of Diosdado Cabello as the new president of the national assembly; Cabello, a loyalist who took part in the 1992 failed coup by Chávez, was duly sworn in on 5 January. Cabello had been marginalised in recent years, but he is now emphatically back in favour, having been appointed as vice-president of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) in December. His rehabilitation is intriguing. Taken in conjunction with the designation of Henry Rangel Silva as the new defence minister, it marks the pre-eminence of the military over the civilian, and radical Socialist, wings of Chavismo.
Cabello replaces Fernando Soto Rojas as president of the national assembly. Soto Rojas had done a decent job of rooting out some of the corruption and nepotism that flourished under his predecessor Cilia Flores, an achievement that the opposition coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) and press recognised. He had also restored a degree of harmony to the national assembly by encouraging rather than stifling the voice of opposition deputies in debates. His replacement by Cabello signifies an attempt to polarise politics in the run-up to presidential elections on 7 October.
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