Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro declared a 60-day “economic emergency” because of plummeting oil prices on Friday, hours before he was to deliver his state of the nation address.
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Maduro described the numbers as “catastrophic” as he defended an emergency declaration giving him 60 days to unilaterally enact sweeping decrees.
Maduro recently named a new cabinet, reshuffling many positions, but in the key position of vice president for the economic area, Luis Salas, Maduro appointed someone considered to be a proponent of the same policies as before, who says that price controls and the currency control must be maintained and that the government’s main weakness has been in the area of enforcement of existing policies.
Expectations for the report are high because Maduro for the first time in 17 years of socialist rule will be delivering it to a congress controlled by the opposition.
The sight of an opposition leader lecturing the president on television feed all networks were required to carry shocked even ardent supporters of the sharp-tonged new congressional leader.
The opposition, which swept December 6 legislative election, holds that it’s Maduro’s own policies that have precipitated the crisis.
The opposition has vowed to rescue Venezuela from an economic crisis that has sparked soaring inflation and shortages of basic goods such as cooking oil and toilet paper.
Maduro had promised to launch an emergency plan for the economy, which was expected to propose new forms of production to reduce Venezuela’s reliance on oil exports.
Venezuela, which has the world’s largest oil reserves, has suffered enormously as the price of oil has crashed from above $90 a barrel two years ago to just $24 today.
Dressed in his red, yellow and blue presidential sash, Maduro periodically sipped from a white coffee cup, as his mentor Chavez once did.
Congress leader Henry Ramos said it is not possible to exit the economic crisis because the president insists on “clinging to a system that has not worked in the world”.
“I want to state for the record that we have complied, respected and obeyed the Supreme Court ruling”, Ramos said.
In another controversy, three opposition lawmakers resigned on Wednesday after the Venezuelan Supreme Court found the National Assembly in contempt for allowing them to take office while their elections are under investigation.
The court responded to that by lifting an injunction that had declared the assembly’s motions would be null and void if the three banned deputies took part.
But it claims its majority should now be calculated based on 163 seats rather than 167 – which would still give it a two-thirds “supermajority”.
Also, there is a lot of speculation that the opposition might try to organize a recall referendum against Maduro, but doing so would require the collection of 20 percent of registered voters’ signatures, which amounts over 3.8 million signatures. Aside from undermining the country’s economic sovereignty, such a move would also nearly definitely mean major painful displacements for economy, leading to increased inequality and unemployment.
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Maduro himself had mostly bad news to share.
