No change at the AN: Flores and Co. stay in charge at the legislature

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Legislators at the National Assembly (AN) voted for the same old faces as their leaders during the new parliamentary session, and anything else would have been out of the unexpected.

• Nobody was going to be silly enough to challenge Deputy Cilia Flores for the presidency of the Assembly. The forceful and formidable boss of the chamber would have eaten them alive.

That said, a few brave souls spoke out against Flores getting the top slot for the third year running. Leading this small pack was Podemos, the social democratic party which used to be aligned with President Hugo Chavez' United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) but crossed over to the opposition in protest against his first (and failed) attempt to reform the Constitution to allow for successive presidential re-election.

Podemos Deputy Ricardo Gutierrez, who was once a vice president of the chamber some years back, claimed that Flores' conduct of affairs so far suggested she felt she owned the house. He also took issue with the re-election of Deputy Saul Ortega (also PSUV) as the first vice president of the legislature, and Jose Albornoz of Patria Para Todos (PPT) as the second. The chamber, he said, had been "kidnapped by a triumvirate."

Be that as it may, the great bulk of the legislators voted for the Old Guard. Most of them hail from the PSUV, and weren't about to rock the boat - or their careers. Even so, a handful of speaker complained that Flores had a habit of frequently interrupting anybody who tried to say anything that wasn't quite the party line. That said, they were allowed to speak this time. The number of dissidents was so small that Flores could afford to wave them aside.

Among them was Deputy Luis Tascon, a one-man-band who was chucked out of the PSUV after airing allegations about corruption at the Infrastructure Ministry. He now leads his own little pro-Chavez party, Nuevo Camino Revolucionario. On Tuesday, Tascon was at it again about the need to curb corruption before it damaged the revolution. One of the few legislators he's managed to persuade to join him, Deputy Tomas Sanchez, abstained, as did Deputy Pastora Medina, who's been at odds with Flores before.

Others speaking out against Flores and Company included Wilmer Azuaje, a dissident PSUV legislator who hails from the president's home state, Barinas, where he's asked pointed questions about how much property the Chavez family owns. Azuaje is deemed to have burned his bridges with Chavez and the PSUV, so maybe he felt he'd got nothing to lose.

Keeping on Albornoz as second vice president was seen as an olive branch from the overwhelming majority of the PSUV to PPT. The two parties have been at odds on several issues in recent times, not least over the choice of candidates for last November's regional elections, when PPT accused the PSUV of hogging the show. Chavez became so out of sorts with PPT that at one stage he told them to get lost, warning them they'd be "pulverized" if they ran against the PSUV -- and at the level of state governors they duly were.