In their first-ever defeat, pro-government legislators narrowly lost a vote that would have ratified new parliamentary procedures aimed at speeding up passage of legislation backed by President Hugo Chavez.
The vote was over the legality of an outdoor session held Friday in a poor Caracas neighborhood considered a bastion of support for Chavez. Pro-Chavez lawmakers convened there to approve the new parliamentary debate rules two days after ruling party and opposition legislators ended up in a shoving match inside the legislative palace. They argued the session was necessary to prevent the opposition from "sabotaging" the National Assembly.
The 79 opposition legislators boycotted the session, saying they feared being attacked by Chavez sympathizers.
After a five-hour debate, Tuesday's vote ended with 82 in favor of the legality of Friday's session, 79 against and three abstentions. It was one vote short of the 50 percent plus one needed for approval. One member of the 165-member unicameral National Assembly didn't attend the debate.
It was the first defeat for Chavez's multiparty ruling coalition since the 2000 general elections that gave the president an almost two-thirds congressional majority. That majority has eroded to a handful of seats over the past three years after several allies defected to the opposition.
The government's loss Tuesday is another headache for a president facing calls for a referendum on his rule later this year. The opposition is trying to organize the vote under a pact brokered by the Organization of American States designed to bring stability to a country convulsed in the past year by a failed coup and a ruinous general strike.
Chavez 's opponents accuse the former army paratroop commander of trying to install an authoritarian regime modeled after Cuba's. Chavez says that a resentful "oligarchy" is sabotaging his efforts to bring social equality to Venezuela.
The vote Tuesday could mean that Chavez may have trouble passing several key laws, including one to tighten restrictions on the media. That law would require that 60 percent of programming be produced within Venezuela, half of which would have to be created by "independent producers" approved by the government. Broadcasters say the law would give too much influence to censors hand-picked by Chavez to crack down on the mostly opposition news media.
A shouting match erupted Tuesday after ruling party legislators demanded a third recount, which the opposition said would be illegal under both the new and old rules. National Assembly President Francisco Ameliach refused to accept the defeat and suspended the session until Thursday.
"We've been tolerating your majority for four years and you for the first time are incapable of accepting a defeat gracefully," opposition lawmaker Cesar Perez Vivas shouted in Ameliach's face. "Get used to it. It's the first of many."
Opposition legislators have also challenged the legality of Friday's session in the Supreme Court.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS