VENEZUELA
Roll Call
The government of beleaguered Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro wrong-footed the opposition by announcing elections before the end of April, after months of refusing to hold fresh polls.
“This announcement sends a debilitated opposition running to find a candidate in a very short time frame,” Bloomberg quoted Carlos Romero, a political analyst at the Central University of Venezuela in Caracas, as saying.
The government announced the plan shortly after the European Union blacklisted seven key allies of the president, adding to US sanctions on more than a dozen top government officials – including Maduro himself. The sanctions were a response to Maduro’s move to create a constituent assembly in July to rewrite the constitution and bypass the national legislature. He was already facing protests demanding new elections.
That same constituent assembly – composed entirely of loyalists from Maduro’s socialist party – approved the new election. Otherwise, the constitution called for the next presidential polls to be held in January 2019.
“The more sanctions, the more elections,” Maduro said following the announcement.
No comments:
Post a Comment