Caracas.- The National Assembly (AN, Parliament) of Venezuela will inaugurate this Monday a new legislative period (2026-2031) again dominated by Chavismo, amid political uncertainty following the capture of President Nicolás Maduro during a military attack by the United States on Caracas and other areas of the South American country.
Meanwhile, Venezuelans remain expectant of the upcoming events after the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ordered that the executive vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, assume the interim presidency of the country. The Supreme Court of Justice ruled on Saturday night, hours after U.S. planes bombed the country and detained Maduro and his wife, without specifying how soon the swearing-in ceremony of Rodríguez should be held. The U.S. President Donald Trump said after announcing on Saturday the capture of Maduro that the valid interlocutor for a transition process in Venezuela is Rodríguez instead of the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, María Corina Machado. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, for his part, assured this Sunday that Rodriguez is someone with whom one can negotiate, unlike Maduro, who would break any agreement established with the United States. However, Trump assured in an interview with The Atlantic magazine that if Rodriguez doesn’t do the right thing, he will end up worse than Maduro.For this Monday, a parliamentary installation session is scheduled, an institution that must swear in the president and other directors of that power.
More doubts than certainties
One of the most important tasks that Maduro had entrusted to this new Parliament is to work on a constitutional reform that, he recently said, “dynamizes, updates and strengthens the rights” established in the constitution, something that, according to the Executive, a commission appointed by the president and headed by the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, has already worked on in 2025.
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With this change of scenario, Parliament will have to determine whether it will continue working towards a constitutional reform or postpone it. Likewise, Maduro had convened the Bolivarian Congress of the Constituent Power, for the next January 9 and 10, with all public powers, including the Bolivarian National Armed Force (FANB).Deputies Rejecting the Attack
Between Saturday and this Sunday, some deputies like the Chavistas Iris Varela, Tania Díaz and Nicolás Maduro Guerra -son of the president- have expressed their rejection of the military attack by the United States, as well as the capture of the president. Varela assured, according to a press release from Parliament, that “every centimeter” of the country will be defended and that Maduro remains the president, so, he affirmed, he will fulfill his mandate until 2031. For his part, Maduro Guerra maintained, in another statement, that the United States bombing and the subsequent capture of his father aims to divide the “revolutionary force”. “Do they want to sow discord? They will not succeed. Do they want to sow doubt? They will not succeed. Afterwards it will be seen, history will tell who the traitors were,” he emphasized. The current president of the AN, Jorge Rodríguez, has not issued a public statement about the US attack, but he was seen at the defense council held on Saturday, which brought together the Minister of Interior and Justice, Diosdado Cabello, the president of the TSJ, Caryslia Rodríguez, the Attorney General, Tarek William Saab, the Minister of Science, Gabriela Jiménez, as well as the strategic operational commander of the FANB, Domingo Hernández Lárez.The president is accused in the United States of four federal charges: narco-terrorism conspiracy, conspiracy to import cocaine, possession of machine guns and destructive devices, and conspiracy to possess those same artifacts in support of criminal activities, as well as collaborating with criminal organizations classified as terrorists by Washington.Maduro and Flores will appear this Monday before a federal court in New York in what will be their first hearing in the U.S. after their capture and transfer to the North American country, judicial sources confirmed to EFE this Sunday.
