Anybody who might have been hoping for new faces at or near the top of Venezuela's National Assembly was in for a disappointment. For the third year running, there was no challenge to Cilia Flores, the forceful president of the legislature; had there been, it would indeed have been an enormous surprise. First Vice President Saúl Ortega, like Flores a leading light in President Hugo Chávez' ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), was also re-elected, as was José Albornoz of minor party Patria Para Todos (PPT) in the second vice presidency.
Iván Zerpa was ratified as secretary of the Assembly, while Victor Clark was brought in to replace José Gregorio Viana as his number two.
While the great bulk of legislators – a large majority of whom hail from the PSUV – voted for the familiar faces, the decision wasn't entirely unanimous. The social democratic party, Podemos, played its customary role of resident awkward squad by voting against Flores and company. Deputy Ricardo Gutiérrez of Podemos, who was once a vice president at the Assembly in the days when the party was in alliance with Chávez, complained that Flores' conduct as president so far suggested that she felt she owned the house. A "triumvirate" had "kidnapped" the chamber, he claimed.
The mainstream oppostion wasn't there, having boycotted the last parliamentary elections in 2005 to make their point that the elections were rigged and un-audited. But Podemos wasn't entirely on its own as a handful of other brave souls accused Flores of repeatedly interrupting whenever anybody got up to express any view other than government orthodoxy or her own, which usually amount to much the same thing.
Among them was Deputy Luis Tascón, who was thrown out of the PSUV after making allegations about corruption at the Infrastructure Ministry, and went off to set up his own little pro-Chávez party, Nuevo Camino Revolucionario. Tascón hopes to recruit other restless souls to his flock, but so far he's not had much luck. But maybe that's because he's constantly on the corruption trail, as he was once again on Monday. "We can't permit corruption to go on blighting the revolution," Tascón airily declared. One of the few recruits he's made from the PSUV, Deputy Tomás Sánchez, abstained, as did Deputy Pastora Medina, who's rebelled against Flores before.
Also in the diminutive anti-Flores camp was dissident PSUV Deputy Wilmer Ajuaje. He's already in the doghouse after voicing complaints about the conduct of the president's family in their home state, Barinas, not least by raising questions about just how much property they've acquired there.
All this said, the number of negative votes was so small that Flores was in a position to wave them aside as she moved on to the parliamentary agenda. This was very much hers, and the priority was clear: first up would be a second debate on the proposal to call a referendum on successive presidential re-election.
The decision to keep on Albornoz as second vice president was seen as an olive branch by the PSUV to PPT. The two parties have had several differences of opinion in recent times, not least of all on the selection of candidates for the regional elections, and Chávez' original plan to change the constitution to allow for successive presidential re-election. PPT had argued that this right should extend to everybody holding elected office. The PSUV dug in its heels against that, although the party's position is unclear now that Chávez himself is now apparently in favor of extending the right to bid for repeated re-election to one and all.
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