{"id":27458,"date":"2019-05-08T22:45:11","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T02:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=27458"},"modified":"2019-05-08T22:45:11","modified_gmt":"2019-05-09T02:45:11","slug":"venezuela-coup-detat-or-constitutional-transition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2019\/05\/08\/venezuela-coup-detat-or-constitutional-transition\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela: Coup d\u2019Etat or Constitutional Transition?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Venezuela Analysis <\/em>has the article Venezuela: Coup d\u2019Etat or Constitutional Transition?<\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Was Maduro legitimately elected?<\/h3>\n

Constitutional exegesis aside, the crux of the opposition\u2019s argument is that Nicolas Maduro\u2019s May 20, 2018 reelection was mired in \u201cfraud\u201d and hence his swearing-in \u201cillegitimate,\u201d creating a power vacuum.<\/p>\n

This contention has been taken up by the mainstream media as an article of faith and repeated ad nauseam.<\/p>\n

For corporate journalists, it doesn\u2019t appear to matter that Maduro was re-elected<\/a> with 6.2 million votes, amounting to around 31 percent of eligible voters, which, as Joe Emersberger notes<\/a>, is average among US presidents. For instance, Barack Obama received 31 percent<\/a> in 2008 and 28 percent<\/a> in 2012, while Trump was elected with just 26 percent <\/a>in 2016, failing to win the popular vote.<\/p>\n

Nor does the Western pundit class seem to care that Maduro won with exactly the same electoral system<\/a> with which the opposition scored its landslide parliamentary victory<\/a> in 2015, from which Juan Guaido purports to derive his legitimacy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

LAWFARE <\/em>has the article Guaid\u00f3, Not Maduro, Is the De Jure President of Venezuela<\/a> to make the opposite case.<\/p>\n

\nThe present Venezuelan crisis began on Jan. 10, when Maduro was sworn in for a second term scheduled to end in 2025. Nobody seems to dispute that his first term ended that day, in accordance with Articles 230 and 231 of the Venezuelan Constitution. The relevant question is whether Maduro was in fact reelected and legally president after Jan. 10.<\/p>\n

Any plausible reading of the constitution shows that Maduro was not reelected and, indeed, that there has been no election at all for the term beginning Jan. 10. Article 293 governs the process for calling and organizing new presidential elections, delegating to the National Electoral Council control over the process. Members of that body are nominated through a complicated scheme that gives significant power to the National Assembly, the country\u2019s unicameral legislature, under Article 296. To Maduro\u2019s chagrin, however, the National Assembly has been under opposition control since 2015.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Are there any indisputable Venezuelan Constitutional scholars who can settle this? Is Mike Pompeo qualified?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Venezuela Analysis has the article Venezuela: Coup d\u2019Etat or Constitutional Transition? Was Maduro legitimately elected? Constitutional exegesis aside, the crux of the opposition\u2019s argument is that Nicolas Maduro\u2019s May 20, 2018 reelection was mired in \u201cfraud\u201d and hence his swearing-in \u201cillegitimate,\u201d creating a power vacuum. This contention has been taken up by the mainstream media […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-27458","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27459,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27458\/revisions\/27459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}