Venezuela – How Are Venezuela Women Coping with Disappearing Civil Liberties, Protracted Violence, Dire Needs for Food, Health Services, Economic Stability?

The Venezuelan government has dissolved the elected, opposition-led parliament and initiated de facto rule.

22 August 2017 – On 19 August, Venezuela’s self-styled Constituent Assembly, installed two weeks earlier by the government of President Nicolás Maduro, announced that it was taking over the functions of the country’s opposition-led parliament, elected in December 2015. Although the government insists it has not dissolved the legislature, that is a mere technicality. Ever since the opposition Democratic Unity coalition took over, parliament has been prevented by the government-controlled Supreme Court (TSJ) from exercising its constitutional functions. Now it has been formally stripped of all its powers.

The Constituent Assembly’s move effaces any lingering pretense that Venezuela remains a democracy. Without a single seat in the assembly, the opposition movement has no meaningful foothold in national institutions and is subject to increasing judicial and police harassment. The assembly’s 545 members appear to be there solely to approve by acclamation any government proposal, since there have been no actual debates.

Venezuela’s increasingly grave crisis effects are felt not only in disappearing civil liberties, but also in growing poverty, hunger, disease and crime………

International Crisis Group – https://www.crisisgroup.org/latin-america-caribbean/andes/venezuela/final-curtain-venezuelas-democracy-parliament-dissolved?utm_source=Sign+Up+to+Crisis+Group%27s+Email+Updates&utm_campaign=68792ad770-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2017_08_22&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1dab8c11ea-68792ad770-359307425