Venezuela AG Asks High Court to Block Constitutional Convention Latin American Herald Tribune June 8, 2017
CARACAS – Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to block President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to convene an assembly to revise the constitution.
“Now I am asking the Electoral Chamber to nullify the decisions of the National Electoral Council, first the decision to call elections for the National Constituent Assembly, because the presidential decree did not comply with legal requirements,” Ortega Diaz said.
The motion comes after the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber rejected the attorney general’s request for clarification of its ruling that Maduro could proceed with the assembly without securing prior approval of voters in a referendum.
“It is the sovereign people who have the authority to convene” a constitutional convention, Ortega Diaz said on Thursday.
She accused Maduro and his administration of “destroying the legacy” of the late President Hugo Chavez, the founder of the governing leftist PSUV party and mentor of the incumbent head of state.
“Chavismo is a current of thought, it’s a philosophy of life, and this is the principal legacy of President Hugo Chavez,” the attorney general said.
Ortega Diaz, who was named attorney general a decade ago, has spent the last few months at odds with the Maduro government as it seeks a way out of a worsening economic crisis and political deadlock with the opposition-controlled congress.
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