Politicians in Venezuela’s U.S.-backed National Assembly said Wednesday that they plan to hold elections as soon as possible once the democratically elected president, Nicolás Maduro, is toppled.
However, Constituent Assembly President Diosdado Cabello fired back, threatening to hold early legislative elections that could unseat the right-wing opposition from the defunct National Assembly.
“We won’t skip a beat,” Cabello said. “We have no doubt that imperialism governs the Venezuelan right wing.”
Pope Francis said yesterday that he had received a request from Maduro to help re-launch talks with the opposition and to end the country’s political crisis. However, the Pope said he hadn’t yet read it.
“I’ll have a look at the letter,” he said. “I’ll see what can be done. But the preliminary conditions are that both sides ask for it.”
National Assembly leader and public face of the U.S.-backed coup Juan Guaidó has said that any dialogue with the government must start with negotiating the terms of Maduro’s exit.
Maduro said, “I ask the Pope to put forth his best effort, his willingness to help us move down a path of dialogue and hopefully a positive response.”
Meanwhile in the United States on the same day, President Donald Trump’s national security adviser John Bolton met Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo at the White House.
In a tweet after the meeting, Bolton said he and Araujo, a conspiracy theorist and climate change denier, discussed “mutual support for Venezuela’s interim president Guaidó, including logistics for providing humanitarian assistance for the Venezuelan people.
“The United States-Brazil alliance is stronger than ever,” he tweeted.
“President Trump has acted swiftly to confront the usurpation of power, corruption [and] human suffering caused by Maduro.
“We are proud to stand with the people of Venezuela, their interim president Juan Guaidó [and] the National Assembly in favor of democracy and prosperity.”
So far, 16 countries, and the EU, have ignored international law and fallen in line with Trump’s regime change policy after Vice President Mike Pence anointed Guaidó on Twitter as Venezuela’s self-declared interim president last month.
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