Venezuela's Maduro ramps up legal fight against Guaido's challenge

[webfact]

Venezuela's Maduro ramps up legal fight against Guaido's challenge

By Corina Pons, Luc Cohen and Matt Spetalnick

 

Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro gestures while he speaks during a meeting with members of the government in Caracas

 

CARACAS/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government stepped up a legal battle against efforts to oust him on Thursday, while the opposition said the international community had pledged more than $100 million in humanitarian aid for the country.

 

Venezuela's opposition, which argues Maduro's presidency is illegitimate because he won in a sham vote, is trying to wrest control of the OPEC nation's oil sector from him and deliver aid to a population suffering food and medicine shortages.

 

Maduro says this is part of a strategy to carry out a U.S.-backed coup and has vowed to remain in office, despite around 50 nations recognising opposition leader Juan Guaido as president. Maduro retains the backing of key allies Russia and China as well as control of Venezuelan state institutions including the military.

 

Venezuela's chief state prosecutor, Tarek Saab, said on Thursday his office had opened an investigation into new opposition-appointed directors at state-run oil firm PDVSA and its U.S. refiner Citgo, Venezuela's most valuable foreign asset.

 

The pro-Maduro Supreme Court then ruled that the proposed board members were prohibited from leaving the country. At least some of the people are believed to already be outside Venezuela.

 

Saab said Guaido had "grotesquely made circus-style appointments" in order to please foreign interests and destabilise the country.

 

"The only directors legitimately appointed to the boards of PDVSA and its subsidiaries are those ... who have been appointed by the executive," Saab said, according to his office's Twitter account.

 

As head of the National Assembly, Guaido invoked constitutional provisions last month to assume the interim presidency.

 

The transitional government should include members of the ruling "Chavismo" movement and military leadership, in an effort to guarantee stability for new elections, a top opposition lawmaker said.

 

That interim government would have 13 months to hold fresh presidential elections from the date Maduro officially steps down as president, Stalin Gonzalez, the second vice president of the congress, told Reuters.

 

"We need to give space to sectors of Chavismo that are not Maduro because we need political stability," Gonzalez said in an interview.

 

The opposition, made up of a coalition of parties, plans to hold primaries in order to put forward a sole candidate for the presidential elections, he added. Chavismo is the movement founded by former President Hugo Chavez, who Maduro succeeded following Chavez' death in 2013 from cancer.

 

"THOUSANDS OF WINDOWS"

Guaido's U.S. representative, Carlos Vecchio, spoke to an aid conference on Thursday hosted at the Organization of American States (OAS) headquarters in Washington, to urge the international community to help get assistance into Venezuela.

 

Vecchio and his aides estimated they had received pledges of more than $100 million in humanitarian assistance from the United States and others, including previous commitments as well as new ones made at the conference.

 

"We must open thousands of windows to bring humanitarian aid to Venezuela," Vecchio told the conference, which was attended by diplomats and representatives from dozens of countries.

 

Elliott Abrams, Washington's special representative on Venezuela, said the United States was looking for ways to send in aid as he reiterated U.S. support for Guaido.

 

"I can assure you that there will be more U.S. assistance coming in the future," Abrams said, without giving specifics.

 

Guaido has said humanitarian aid will enter the country on Feb. 23, setting the stage for a showdown with Maduro, who has said it is not needed and should not be let in.

 

Guaido's declaration was "absolutely absurd" as he had "control of nothing," Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said on Thursday.

 

"In Venezuela there's only one government – the government of President Maduro - so no one can give deadlines, especially this man," Arreaza told reporters at the United Nations.

 

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has said it wants a peaceful resolution to the crisis but has refused to rule out military intervention. Cuba accused the United States on Thursday of moving special forces closer to Venezuela as part of a covert plan to intervene.

 

Military aircraft from the United States had flown to strategically located Caribbean islands last week, Cuba said.

 

"It's a new lie," Abrams said, when asked about it at the Washington event.

 

(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Fabian Cambero, Corina Pons and Vivian Sequera in Caracas, Marc Frank in Havana, Michelle Nichols at the United Nations; Writing by Angus Berwick; Editing by Sarah Marsh and Rosalba O'Brien)

 

 

-- © Copyright Reuters 2019-02-15

 

[MalandLee]

China’s Social Credit System is an example of what happens when an authoritarian government gets tech savvy. The system basically puts the entire billion-plus population of China under government control, with officials determining which citizens should be given loans, train passes, special privileges, and so on. Citizens who have negative scores are denied benefits.

Venezuela was so impressed by the system that they contracted the Chinese company responsible for coming up with it in order to have them create a similar technology to implement in the Latin American country. ZTE obliged and created the “fatherland card” to help the ruling Maduro regime reward and punish citizens as they deem fit.

SOURCE:http://www.visiontimes.com/2019/02/14/how-china-exports-social-control-tech-to-venezuela.html

Further info on youtube - one amongst many -

 

Venezuela is a sinister state,in bed with "sinister" leaders....

 

 

 

 

[Srikcir]

5 hours ago, webfact said:

As head of the National Assembly, Guaido invoked constitutional provisions last month to assume the interim presidency.

That can only happen if the democratically elected President is absent from office such as missing and where-abouts unknown. Even then all the interim President can do is hold a new election requiring (I suspect) Supreme Court certification for a new election.

Obviously, Maduro is not missing and the Supreme Court backs his presidency.

As President of the National Assembly Guaido cannot legally and unilaterally take over the head of government.

Which is why the US and other nations are calling for new elections monitored by international observers.

[leeneeds]

Guaido needs the military or the stalemate  will continue.  Observers from outside and do another vote.

[atyclb]

8 hours ago, webfact said:

Cuba accused the United States on Thursday of moving special forces closer to Venezuela as part of a covert plan to intervene.

 

 

cuba, whose system is working way better than that of venezuela, should step in and help maduro get his country out of despair, abject poverty and famine.

[Guest Jerry787]

guaido is a silly puppet of trump and oil corporations who want control of minerals and oil

they will make profit in waging civil war financing guns and 

then they will destroy Guatemala as they did in iraq, libya

 

then they will make money on re building

 

meantime sucking off all natural reserves

 

this is what the call exporting democracy 

and the fools (which is the majority ) believe it....