Venezuela hurtles toward electoral abyss

The two sides in Venezuela's protracted political conflict are racing to name new electoral authorities in anticipation of key National Assembly elections that could determine the fate of US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido.

Venezuela's US-sanctioned government already took a key step toward stripping Guaido of his constitutional claim to an interim presidency that is recognized by dozens of Western countries. In a 26 May ruling, the country's rubber-stamp supreme court ratified a parallel assembly leadership headed by Luis Parra, who received the written ruling today.

Guaido's leadership of the assembly, considered Venezuela's last democratic institution, underpinned his January 2019 declaration of an interim presidency, with the ambitious goal of forcing President Nicolas Maduro to step down.

"If Guaido is not legitimately the National Assembly president in 2020, then he cannot constitutionally maintain his self-proclaimed fiction that he is the constitutional interim president of Venezuela," a presidential palace official told Argus.

Parra, who was expelled from the opposition Primero Justicia party (PJ) in December 2019 for allegedly participating in a vote-buying scandal, caucused with the government's United Socialist Party (PSUV) minority in the legislature in January to claim the assembly presidency in a military-backed maneuver that prevented most of Guaido's supporters from casting any votes. Russia, Maduro's main foreign patron, recognized Parra's victory.

A Parra aide tells Argus the new assembly leadership's first priority is to secure supreme court support to appoint a new electoral council board (CNE). A new board would then move to organize assembly elections that are constitutionally mandated to take place by December.

The elections could be held earlier to "expedite the legislature's return to its normal deliberative status," Parra's aide said.

The loss of Guaido's constitutional claim means all of his "ad hoc" diplomatic and state-owned corporate appointments "are now also null and illegal" the aide added, referring specifically to exile boards of Venezuela's national oil company PdV and its US refining arm Citgo.

The Guaido-led assembly, which was forced to meet at remote locations outside of the legislative palace after January and now meets virtually because of coronavirus restrictions, today reaffirmed its own plan to name a new CNE board through a committee of 11 deputies and 10 civil society members.

"Any electoral authority that is not named by the legitimate National Assembly will be rejected and unrecognized by Venezuela and the democratic world," the assembly said today.

But the opposition, comprised of four political parties, is divided over whether to participate in the elections at all, unless free and fair conditions can be guaranteed. Maduro won a second term in Venezuela's last election in May 2018, a process that was widely deemed to be fraudulent.

The US, which imposed oil sanctions on Venezuela shortly after Guaido claimed the interim presidency, blasted what it called the "sham" court ruling last month.

"Maduro is counting on a distracted international community to overlook this move to further destroy Venezuelan democratic institutions and consolidate power," the State Department said. "Parra and his gang have forsaken their representation of the Venezuelan people and instead represent the regime's corrupt inner circle and their misguided quest to maintain power."