Weekly Report - 24 November 2016 (WR-16-46)

Early on 23 November, the opposition governor of Miranda state, Henrique Capriles Radonski, tweeted that the government led by President Nicolás Maduro had “abandoned” the new Vatican-mediated political dialogue in the country. The ostensible reason, Capriles said, was anger at the decision by the national assembly, controlled by the opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) coalition, to debate the case of the narco-sobrinos, in reference to the conviction in New York on 18 November of two nephews of the First Lady Cilia Flores for conspiring to traffic 800kg of cocaine into the US.