The president then issued a number of executive orders on Monday, including one stripping the National Assembly of its power to appoint board members to the country’s central bank.
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Many supporters of the opposition accompanied the incoming lawmakers past a heavy military barricade to the legislature downtown. Some have argued that that control of parliament does not amount to control of this country.
The Supreme Court granted injunctions last month that blocked four deputies – three from the opposition and one allied with the government – from taking office after losing Socialist Party candidates filed legal challenges to the results.
In the 6 December election, the opposition MUD coalition won 112 seats and the governing Socialist coalition 55.
One government and three opposition members were suspended because of alleged electoral irregularities and were not allowed to take up their seats.
But even with a supermajority control of congress, the opposition will still face an uphill battle in Venezuela, where every other national government institution remains under chavista control, including the courts.
Cabello said the problem was that the opposition bloc chose to hold a parliamentary debate, when the opening session was supposed to be a purely protocol session and the election of the new leadership.
An outspoken opposition leader known for embracing confrontation was selected Sunday to head the new congress that will open in two days as a counterweight to Venezuela’s socialist administration.
A government supporter wears a piece of tape over his mouth, decorated with an image of the eyes of Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez, outside Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2016, to protest the swearing-in of opposition lawmakers.
The coalition’s more moderate wing has lambasted the hard-liners’ strategy of trying to force Maduro from office and wants to take pragmatic steps to wrench the oil-dependent economy out of a tailspin marked by triple-digit inflation and the world’s deepest recession.
The president also increased restrictions on access to economic information and the assembly’s ability to see confidential central bank documents as well as reserving the right to suspend the publication of economic indicators if he judges the country to be facing threats “to national security and to economic stability”.
Furthermore, the MUD will seek to pass a law granting property rights to beneficiaries of President Nicolas Maduro’s Great Housing Mission Venezuela and to allow for the granting of food stamps to retired citizens.
A tired-sounding Maduro later commended the lawmakers for leaving the session, but added that his party would have to “get used to a new political dynamic in the country” and work hard to take back the ground lost in the legislative elections.
They were outraged by opposition lawmakers’ attempts to propose an amnesty for numerous politicians who the opposition says are political prisoners.
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Venezuela’s opposition will launch an offensive Wednesday against President Nicolas Maduro at its first full session in control of the legislature, having vowed to oust him within six months. Maduro said during a television address on Monday evening. “A bourgeoisie congress will never do anything but legislate the slavery of the people”.
