Maduro Calls for Snap National Assembly Elections
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org - Home - Stephen Lendman)
Venezuelan National Assembly (AN) elections are scheduled for 2020. At a Saturday rally, President Maduro told supporters:
“They want an election? We will conduct a (snap) parliamentary election” this year, adding: “How long are they going to hurt the country. Enough of all the damage they’ve done to our country!”
“Stop calling the war. Stop calling for military intervention. Stop supporting a coup that has failed, failed and was not realized. Here the revolution is ruling, and we will continue to govern.”
“Let it be known that this Bolivarian movement is a deeply rooted force, with a defined and democratic country project, with a people, with the civic-military union. We are a united and powerful force. Leave the path of Yankee interventionism.”
Venezuela’s National Constituent Assembly was democratically elected to revise the nation’s Constitution, subject to the popular will up or down by democratic referendum.
The body will rule on Maduro’s snap election proposal, approval likely. The AN needs to be “re-legitimized,” he said.
For illegally swearing in three contested legislators in January 2016, Venezuela’s Supreme Court held the opposition-controlled AN in contempt, its decisions null and void - the judiciary to act in its place because of its “contempt” and “incapacitation” to carry out its constitutional duties.
Pro-Maduro lawmakers boycotted illegitimate AN sessions. Things remain unresolved in standoff. US and other Western media falsely claimed the AN was dissolved - not so!
It’s very much intact – in contempt of the judicial system, a resolvable situation if the three MPs in question, accused of gaining their seats by electoral fraud, resign or are removed.
Article 336.7 of Venezuela’s Constitution authorizes the Supreme Court to “declare an unconstitutional default in the national, state or municipal legislature…and establish, if necessary, corrective measures” at the court’s discretion.
As things now stand, the opposition-controlled AN remains in contempt of Venezuelan constitutional law, why its actions have no legal standing, according to the Supreme Court.
New AN elections could reinstate the body to perform its legislative functions - short of resolving the Trump regime’s coup attempt to destroy Bolivarian social democracy, gain another imperial trophy, and control over the world’s largest oil reserves, the key reason behind what’s going on.
On Saturday, two high-ranking Venezuelan military officers defected, likely bribed by the CIA or so-called National Endowment for Democracy, a US body mandated to eliminate it wherever it exists.
The defectors urged other military officials to join their betrayal of democratic governance. Maduro dismissed their call, saying “(t)he Bolivarian armed forces are more loyal than ever under my command.”
He alone is Venezuela’s legitimate president, Juan Guaido a US-designated usurper, to be used and discarded at Washington’s discretion, a pawn to facilitate the coup attempt.
Venezuela’s military condemned the defectors, a statement saying “(w)e in the armed forces will not put up with such actions. The Venezuelan Air Force remains loyal to our president, and we will prevail in spite of such traitors.”
The Trump regime’s Trojan horse humanitarian aid for Venezuelans was debunked by Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeting:
US officials involved in “wag(ing) unjust wars…devastat(ing) innocent…populations, subject(ing) economies to a blockade, caus(ing) death, hunger, destruction, and suffering” dare to claim their actions are “humanitarian.”
The struggle for Venezuela’s soul continues, the stakes huge - freedom or fascism, democratic or despotic rule, sovereign independence or US control over the country, its resources and people.
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