Venezuela’s government orders arrests of 3 exiled former lawmakers in renewed efforts to unseat Nicolás Maduro
Venezuela’s socialist government has ordered the arrest of three exiled former lawmakers at the forefront of renewed efforts to unseat President Nicolás Maduro.
Dinorah Figuera leads an a ll-female team selected last week by fellow opposition politicians to lead the National Assembly that was voted into office in 2015. The opposition-controlled assembly is widely considered the South American nation’s last democratically elected institution, and although its five year mandate ended in late 2020, it continues to function as a symbolic shadow to Maduro’s rubber-stamping National Assembly.
On Monday, Maduro’s Attorney General Tarek William Saab announced that prosecutors had ordered the arrest of Figuera and her two deputies on charges of treason, money laundering and impersonating public officials.
However, the arrest order is unlikely to be carried out. All three women, like many of Maduro’s opponents, have fled Venezuela in recent years, fearing retaliation. Figuera, a surgeon by training, lives in Spain.
In January 2019, the National Assembly voted to stop recognizing Maduro as president after several top opponents were barred from running against him. It then appointed Juan Guaidó to be the nation’s “interim president,” in accordance with the order of succession outlined in Venezuela’s constitution. More than 60 countries quickly recognized him as Venezuela’s legitimate leader
Figuera was previously an unknown backbench lawmaker elected alongside Guaidó. She surged to the front of the opposition’s efforts to unseat Maduro as part of an internal putsch against the beleaguered Guaidó, whose failure to shake Maduro’s grip on power has frustrated many Venezuelans.
Maduro ally Jorge Rodríguez, the head of the pro-government National Assembly, celebrated the announcement of the arrest orders, calling the 2015 National Assembly a “band of thieves” for their attempts to win control of Venezuela’s extensive overseas oil assets, including Houston-based refinery Citgo.
Now approaching a decade in power with continued backing from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran, Maduro looks stronger than ever as he approaches the next presidential election, scheduled for 2024.
Venezuela’s leader derided the former legislative body — and the British insistence on continuing to recognize it — as components of a continuing campaign of “political, economic, financial, energy, and diplomatic aggression.”
Maduro Blasts ‘Ridiculous’ UK Move to Extend Recognition of Long-Expired 2015 Assembly
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is slamming Whitehall for its “laughable” claim that the National Assembly, which was elected in 2015, is the Caribbean country’s only legitimate institution.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is slamming Whitehall for its “laughable” claim that the National Assembly, which was elected in 2015, is the Caribbean country’s only legitimate institution.
“It is laughable and ridiculous that at this point, they still resort to this farce and falsehood,” Maduro said Thursday in his annual message to the Venezuelan legislature.
Earlier on Thursday, Britain’s Foreign Office issued a statement reiterating it continues to “consider the National Assembly elected in 2015 as the last democratically elected National Assembly in Venezuela” after that group voted to dissolve the supposed ‘interim presidency’ of Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaido.
“The UK continues not to accept the legitimacy of the administration put in place by Nicolás Maduro,” it wrote.
Maduro dismissed that 2015 legislature – whose five-year mandate to legislate legally expired in 2020 – as little more than a cat’s paw in a Western-backed plot to “recolonize Venezuela.”
“The only exclusive and determining legislative body is the National Assembly elected by the people in 2020,” Maduro noted.
“Everything else is a farce mounted as part of a political, economic, financial, energy, and diplomatic aggression,” Maduro told lawmakers Thursday.
“We have been able to confront it and in 2023, we will have defeated it.”
London’s refusal to recognize the Venezuelan government could impact the ongoing UK-based court case determining whether the Bank of England will be forced to return over a billion dollars worth of gold to the Caribbean country.
Since 2020, the bank has refused to relinquish 32 tons of Venezuelan gold – valued at roughly $1.7 billion – to the Maduro administration, citing the British government’s decision to recognize Guaido rather than its elected leader.
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