Venezuela installs new all-powerful assembly rejected by US

CARACAS, Venezuela – Defying the U.S. and international community, Venezuela installed a new legislative body Friday that will have virtually unlimited power to rewrite the South American nation’s constitution and eliminate the last remnants of its democracy.

Delegates to the new national constituent assembly, elected Sunday under suspected fraud, were sworn in shortly after 1 p.m. during a pomp-filled ceremony inside the gold-domed legislative palace in downtown Caracas, the nation’s capital. All 545 delegates streamed into the building together, each holding a red flower. Some held portraits of the late President Hugo Chavez and Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar.

“Viva Chavez!” they proclaimed after singing the national anthem.

Outside, supporters of President Nicolas Maduro, clad in the ruling socialist party’s signature red, surrounded the Congress and celebrated with tricolor flags, live music and spontaneous dancing. They were protected by state security forces, who set up barricades blocks away.

Opposition lawmakers weren’t in session Friday. But they have pledged to remain inside the legislative palace to defend their seats in the democratically elected National Assembly. The new constituent assembly was installed in a room just steps from where parliament meets. The opposition called for an afternoon protest.

The Vatican became the latest country Friday to urge Maduro to suspend the new assembly, elected in a vote boycotted by the opposition that was widely seen as fraudulent. Numerous countries in Latin America and Europe have threatened sanctions against Venezuela.

The Trump administration has already frozen Maduro’s U.S. assets and signaled more penalties to come, including sanctions against all or some of the assembly’s delegates – a list that includes Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, and powerful socialist congressman Diosdado Cabello. Even state-run television boasted of a delegate from its ranks. Presiding over the assembly will be Delcy Rodriguez, a former foreign minister.

Maduro and members of his inner circle have said that among the new assembly’s first moves will be to dissolve the National Assembly, prosecute opposition lawmakers and dismiss or jail Luisa Ortega, the country’s chief prosecutor. Maduro and his allies control every other public institution.

Ortega launched a criminal investigation Wednesday into the contested election, and filed a court motion Thursday to try to block the new assembly’s installation. As expected, it was rejected. At least 10 people died on Election Day in skirmishes with government forces.

Hours before Friday’s installation ceremony and without explanation, the government returned Antonio Ledezma to house arrest. Ledezma is one of two high-profile opposition leaders who were jailed after being seized from their homes in midnight raids Tuesday.

Seating the assembly was a somewhat chaotic affair, with reporters and delegates struggling to make their way into the legislative palace.

Supporters carried into the building large Chavez portraits that had been removed by opposition leaders when they took over in 2016.

“The people demand justice and an iron fist,” delegate Iris Varela declared to reporters on her way in, “and justice and an iron fist is what they’ll get!”

Another delegate, Oscar Schemer, said he’d back a “truth commission” to prosecute people he claimed were behind the deadly civil unrest in the country.

“Those responsible for promoting and instigating violence must pay for their crimes,” he said in an interview. “We must pursue justice and end impunity.”

A small group of socialist parliament members who broke with their party over the new assembly called for an election audit and pledged to remain in session, even outside the legislative palace.

“The National Assembly can’t legally lose its power,” German Ferrer, a congressman from Lara state, told reporters. “If the National Electoral Council members can’t deliver the truth, then they should step aside.”

Maduro fans taking part in Friday’s government-sponsored festivities, including a march to the legislative palace, repeated the president’s contention that the new assembly would quell nearly four months of unrest. Oil-rich Venezuela has been plagued by food and medicine shortages and rampant crime amid an economic collapse caused by government mismanagement and plunging oil prices.

“I voted for peace for my country,” said 20-year-old Danielys Gallardo, who traveled to the installation from her home state of Portuguesa, where she serves on a local socialist community council. “I’ve been really disappointed with all the young people protesting in the streets.”

Gallardo, sporting a red cap and painted Venezuelan flags on both her cheeks, had trouble explaining what the new assembly would do – “Each delegate is going to bring a proposal, an idea, to end this war,” she said – and rejected that their election had been fixed.

“For me, there wasn’t fraud because I voted,” she said. “If there were fraud, President Chavez wouldn’t have won 17 years ago.”

Smartmatic, the London-based company that provides Venezuela with its voting software and machines, said in a stunning admission Wednesday that the results had been inflated by at least 1 million of a purported nearly 8.1 million votes. The company told the Wall Street Journal it chartered a private plane to whisk its Venezuelan employees out of the country Tuesday night. National elections chief Tibisay Lucena dismissed fraud claims and threatened legal action against the firm.

In a statement Thursday, the State Department said it considers the assembly “the illegitimate product of a flawed process designed by the Maduro dictatorship to further its assault on democracy.” The election, it said, “was rigged from the start.” Jorge Arreaza, the newly named Venezuelan foreign minister, tweeted that the American position is “irrelevant.”

“We accept no aggressions against our sovereignty and independence, much less from an unpopular and stumbling government like the one of Donald Trump.”