CARACAS, Venezuela —President Nicolás Maduro’s call to hold a “mega-election” that could obliterate the opposition-dominated legislature was met Thursday with a storm of protest from politicians facing an ever-bleaker future.
In a news conference Wednesday, Maduro proposed moving up legislative elections originally scheduled for 2020. They would be held alongside a snap presidential election scheduled for April 22.
The socialist president made the move after the opposition refused to participate in the presidential election because of what it called fraudulent conditions.
“The government believes with this announcement and its thirst for power that it can change the reality in the country,” said Stalin González, an opposition legislator, in a tweet. “The National Assembly has done its job holding (the government) accountable and that’s why they want to get rid of it.”
Maduro has become increasingly authoritarian as Venezuela has spiraled into chaos, with inflation expected to hit 13,000 percent this year and thousands of people leaving the country because of food shortages, high crime and other woes.
The national legislature had already been largely sidelined since Maduro called elections last year that established a Constituent Assembly with sweeping powers. That body is dominated by his followers.
The opposition has spent months in internationally mediated talks with the government in the Dominican Republic, seeking a way out of the political and economic crisis in Venezuela, but the dialogue has yielded no agreement.
Maduro explained his call for legislative elections by saying the country needed a “truly legitimate National Assembly in the service of the people.” He added that the “mega-election” would also involve choosing state legislators and mayors. The proposal is poised for approval by the Constituent Assembly.
“They want to oblige us to participate, but that’s not going to happen,” opposition lawmaker Luis Florido said in a telephone interview. “What they’re doing is simply illegal and a means to profit from our absence” from the election.
The U.S. government and several Latin American countries have assailed Maduro for scheduling a presidential election that is unlikely to include a single major opposition candidate. One opposition leader, Leopoldo López, is under house arrest and another, Henrique Capriles, was barred by electoral authorities from running for 15 years.
Opposition legislator Julio Borges tweeted: “Nicolás Maduro, with this farce of a ‘mega election’ you’re committing suicide. Your days are numbered.”
Moisés Naím, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who served as a Venezuelan cabinet minister in the early 1990s, said Maduro was taking after leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in staging virtually meaningless elections.
“Replacing the only institution left with real legitimacy, which none of his institutions has, is his latest great charade,” Naím said in a telephone interview.
Venezuela’s opposition has proved ineffectual in challenging Maduro, despite the country’s disastrous economic condition.
