Venezuelan opposition blocks 'economic emergency' decree; Court gives it a green light.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, looking for a way to rebound after the stunning defeat his party suffered in the December parliamentary elections, proposed major changes last month to the government's much maligned economic program. The opposition Mesa de la Unidad Democratica (MUD) coalition, however, used the comfortable two-thirds majority it earned in those elections to quickly thwart the president's efforts (NotiSur, Jan. 8, 2016).
Since its launch 17 years ago by the late Hugo Chavez, president from 1999 until his death in 2013, the government's Bolivarian Revolution has been criticized far and wide for failing to introduce an economic model that frees Venezuela from its overdependence on oil. The leadership finally recognized its mistakes and proposed a change of course in the form an 'economic emergency' decree, signed Jan. 14. But the opposition, caught up in a chaotic internal situation, failed to capitalize, choosing instead to simply reject the Maduro administration's plan. The MUD-dominated Asamblea Nacional (AN), Venezuela's unicameral legislature, voted against the decree on Jan. 22. Divisions within the MUD are also preventing it from advancing on its 'emblematic' goals of securing amnesty for jailed opposition leaders and designing a course of action to put an early end, democratically, to Maduro's presidency, which runs until 2019.
MUD suffered another setback on Feb. 11, when the Tribunal Supremo de Justicia (TSJ) declared Maduro's economic emergency decree to be constitutional and invalidated the AN vote against it. The high court is widely viewed as being biased in favor of the Maduro administration, and its maneuvering on behalf of the decree issue, according to Associated Press correspondent Jorge Rueda, threatens to exacerbate political tensions and pave the way for a new clash between the branches of government.
Emergency measures
Maduro, looking to take the initiative in the now opposition-controlled AN, presented lawmakers with his economic emergency plan on Jan. 15, two weeks before opposition leader Henrique Capriles would say the time had come to determine a mechanism for ousting the president, and a month before the legislature began debating an amnesty bill for jailed regime opponents.
The decree calls for revising the basic guidelines that have governed economic policy under the Bolivarian Revolution. Its specific goal is to end Venezuela's dependence on oil revenue by developing a new system of...
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