Development: On 7 December Venezuela’s national electoral council (CNE) published a second electoral bulletin giving the main opposition coalition, Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), 107 national assembly seats following the day-earlier legislative elections, to 55 for the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV).
Significance: The MUD insists that it will have 112 of the 167 seats as of 5 January, thanks to three indigenous representatives that also hail from opposition parties plus another two seats not yet confirmed but also opposition-leaning. That would give it a two-thirds majority, enabling it to propose or modify organic laws, put constitutional reform proposals to referendum, and even convoke a constituent assembly. It is the worst possible outcome for President Nicolás Maduro, with some right-wing MUD factions now warning that Maduro is unlikely to see out his term, due to end in January 2019. However, there are also warnings by moderate opposition voices that the MUD should not get drunk on power, and that the vote was less in favour of the opposition than against the Maduro government and the severe economic crisis in the country.
- The results are nothing less than a landslide for the MUD, which won in every single Caracas district and also took every district in eight states including Barinas, home state of the late Hugo Chávez. Overall, it won in 20 of the country’s 23 states, plus the federal district. There are now calls on the Chavista website Apporea for Maduro to resign as PSUV party president before he and the party leadership “assassinate” Chávez’s legacy.
- Maduro himself yesterday called for a debate that would be “critical, self-critical and one of action” to “reconstruct the revolutionary majority”, starting with broad new consultations with the party base. Maduro and Diosdado Cabello, the current legislative assembly president and PSUV second-in-command, are taking the line that the Revolution needs to fight back against a usurping right-wing conspiracy.
- Opposition blogger Juan Cristobal Nagel points out that under Article 73 of the 1999 constitution, a two-thirds legislative majority can initiate a referendum on special matters, including one to revoke the president’s mandate. Articles 343 and 348 allow it to initiate constitutional reform and/or convoke a constituent assembly.
- Elsewhere, under Art 205 it can approve organic laws, while under Art 193 it can create or eliminate congressional committees – for example into official corruption. Art. 265 permits the removal of judges, including supreme court magistrates found to have committed ‘serious errors’ by the ‘Poder Ciudadano’ (the comptroller general, the prosecutor general, and the public ombudsman). It can also renew the Poder Ciudadano and the CNE. And finally it would also be able to review and repeal laws, treaties and international agreements to which the state is a signatory.
Looking Ahead: In order not to disappoint the 7.7m Venezuelans that voted for change, it will be incumbent upon the MUD to avoid revenge politics. The moderate MUD leader Henrique Capriles Radonski yesterday called on Maduro to abandon his confrontational language and sit down with the opposition to deliver relief from the current economic crisis to ordinary citizens. With oil prices at a near seven-year low, that will not be easy, and with radical factions agitating on both sides, both MUD and PSUV unity will be put to the test.
End of preview - This article contains approximately 546 words.
Subscribers: Log in now to read the full article
Not a Subscriber?
Choose from one of the following options
