A new institutional schism opened this Sunday in Venezuela. The Chavista deputies voted as president of Parliament an almost unknown Luis Parra, while police forces prevented Juan Guaidó from hitting the hemicycle, re-elected hours later as leader of the chamber at the headquarters of the newspaper El Nacional .
The Legislative Palace dawned taken by officials of the Bolivarian National Police (GNP) and the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB, militarized police), who even prevented numerous journalists from entering the headquarters of the National Assembly (AN).
There Guaidó appeared next to a group of deputies who were held like him for hours at the different control points under the excuse that they should review the documentation one by one.
In parallel, parliamentarians of the official Bloque de la Patria and opponents who have departed from the Guaidó line, accused many of them of corruption, entered without major problem.
When Guaidó, whom almost 60 countries recognize as the interim president of Venezuela, arrived at the building the agents of the Bolivarian National Guard (GNB) prevented him from accessing and then the most unusual scene of the day was unleashed: a dozen officials They beat back.
Then he climbed to a fence from which he tried to jump to access the enclosure and even came to face a high GNB officer, with two faces separated by a few centimeters, at the top of the fence.
https://twitter.com/manelmarquez/status/1213912788462166017
Inside the Parliament everything accelerated and the oldest deputy, the Chavista Héctor Agüero, assumed the presidency temporarily as established in the debate regulations.
According to the Efe agency, the head of the ruling party, Francisco Torrealba, urged Deputy Luis Parra, expelled from the First Justice opposition party weeks ago after being accused of corruption, according to an investigation by Armando.info, and instructed that was anointed president of the AN.
To the surprise even of himself, Parra was elected, although he never knew the number of votes he obtained, because the transmission for many media was impossible before the general fall of the networks and only the Venezuelan state television channel (VTV) made a medium transmission.
The wildness of the scene was evident when Parra had to address the audience with a megaphone in hand because the sound technicians refused to turn on the microphones. Then, several Chavismo supporters tried to knock down the audio booth.
Torrealba stopped that action and asked to accelerate the voting. As he said later, the official deputies were nervous because Guaidó did not arrive, although from inside you could hear the fight unleashed at the gates between the opposition leader and the GNB agents.
"Today, in what is the dismantling of the rule of law and the assassination of the Republic we see how they take the Federal Legislative Palace violently," Guaidó said minutes later with his voice broken and the jacket of his suit tattered by the fight.
Notably affected, the only president of the AN until today denounced that for the election of the new directive of the chamber it was necessary "the complicity of some pseudo-deputies", like Parra himself, labeled as corrupt by a good part of the opposition.
However, and despite the support of those parliamentarians, Guaidó said that this Sunday's session did not have a sufficient majority for the quorum, since the Chavistas "do not have enough votes". "Despite that, Parliament resists. Today we Venezuelans stand up to defend Venezuela," he said. For the re-election a quorum of 84 of the 167 deputies is necessary.
Despite the scene of Guaidó trying to enter the legislative headquarters, which went around social networks and opened media covers throughout the day, the president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, said he did not enter the Assembly because he did not want to " to face".
Since the inauguration of the baseball stadium in La Guaira, a town near Caracas, where he played a softball match with the military and other members of the Government, Maduro said Guaidó did not enter because he was not going to have the necessary votes to be re-elected.
"You don't have them on because if you have to face a situation, it looks like a face, but you didn't want to face it," he snapped at an act of a theoretically sporting nature that he attended accompanied by Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino.
For the president, the deputies withdrew their support for the opposition leader, whom he described as "a very corrupt being," since "the procession came from within" because "the country repudiates Juan Guaidó as a puppet of US imperialism."
In addition, he said that it was the opponents themselves who requested a security device that was the "one that has been assembled every January 5 for 20 years to the present day", when the sessions in the Legislature are inaugurated.
Parallel voting
Given the impossibility of accessing the Legislative Palace, Guaidó called on the opposition deputies to do this Sunday's session at the headquarters of the newspaper El Nacional , with a clear opposition line.
There were 111 deputies who voted for Guaidó to be re-elected as president of the AN, a fundamental position since he and with an interpretation of the Constitution passed to the interim presidency of Venezuela, in which he has been recognized by a good part of the community international.
https://twitter.com/jguaido/status/1214013662933004290
As soon as he was re-elected, and with the innumerable doubts that revolve around the election of Parra, he convened for Tuesday, January 7, the first session of the AN, of an abysmal opposition majority.
Parra has convened a parliamentary session for that same date, which doubles the Venezuelan institutional paradox, which also has a Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) not recognized by the opposition and another "in exile."
The AN, which was also declared in contempt by the TSJ, is overshadowed with a parallel institution, the National Constituent Assembly (ANC), composed only of Chavistas and not recognized by much of the international community, which has assumed almost all functions Parliament's own.
As soon as the vote was over, Venezuelan opposition deputy José Hernández denounced to journalist Beatriz Adrián that they tried to bribe him to vote against Guaidó. He says he was offered "$ 750,000."
https://twitter.com/Beadrian/status/1214022701251207174
And of course at the top of the dichotomy are President Nicolás Maduro, who governs the country, and Guaidó, whose title as interim president has not gone from being merely theoretical. Next Tuesday a new chapter will be lived in that legality struggle.
International support
Juan Guaidó's international allies, recognized by more than 50 countries as the interim president of Venezuela, condemned and described the election this Sunday by the Chavism of a new head of Parliament, in a session to which prevented him from entering the opposition leader.
The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, who has expressed on many occasions his unwavering support for Guaido, condemned the "acts of violence" and "any usurpation action taken contrary to constitutional legitimacy and majorities "of the Venezuelan Parliament.
https://twitter.com/Almagro_OEA2015/status/1214014882238124032
Likewise, the countries of the Lima Group rejected the result of the election by condemning "the use of force by the dictatorial regime of Nicolás Maduro" to prevent deputies from "freely accessing" that meeting.
"The National Assembly has the constitutional right to meet without intimidation or interference to elect its president and board, so we do not know the result of an election that violates those rights and that has been given without the full participation of the deputies who attended the session, "said a statement from the Lima Group released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Peru. The government of El Salvador also joined the support of Guaidó.
https://twitter.com/cancilleriasv/status/1214001203543232512
While the United States, one of the biggest critics of the Maduro government, called the vote "farce" and reaffirmed its support for Guaidó, who said he will continue to consider Venezuela's "interim president."
"The desperate actions of the old Maduro regime, illegally preventing the entrance to the building of Juan Guaidó and the majority of the deputies of the National Assembly, has caused the 'vote' of this morning, which lacks quorum and does not meet the minimum constitutional standards, be a farce, "said the head of Latin America in the US Department of State, Michael Kozak
Mike Pomeo Secretary of State of the United States congratulated Guaidó through Twitter: "Arrests, bribes and blocking access to his building could not derail the # National Assembly of Venezuela. Only a transitional government that organizes free presidential elections and just can end the crisis. "
https://twitter.com/SecPompeo/status/1214002333752934400
RELATED:
Chavismo elects the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela in the absence of Guaidó and other opponents
Encouraged by Bolivia, Guaido revives protests in Venezuela against Maduro, who also received support from his followers