Venezuelan president’s demand for powers rejected

Venezuela’s opposition-controlled national assembly has rejected a decree granting emergency economic powers to president Nicolás Maduro, deepening the political and economic crisis gripping the South American country.

The embattled socialist leader had sought a 60-day constitutional “state of exception” that would give him the right to spend treasury funds as he sees fit, temporarily expropriate private property and further choke his citizens’ already limited access to foreign currency in order to halt the accelerating disintegration of the country’s economy.

Voted down

But the opposition United Democratic Table (MUD) alliance voted down the measure saying Mr Maduro had refused to recognise the ruinous impact of his administration’s populist policies, warning that in his hands the decree powers would only worsen the crisis.

Venezuela’s economy has been left dangerously exposed by the collapse in the price of oil, practically the country’s only cash earner. Last week the IMF predicted that inflation, which was 141.5 per cent for the first nine months of last year, would hit 720 per cent this year. It also said the economy would contract by a further 8 per cent after a 10 per cent contraction last year.

Mr Maduro, who succeeded his mentor Hugo Chávez as president in 2013, attacked the opposition’s decision, saying that rather than tackle the crisis in a “proactive manner” it had settled “for the path of spectacle and sterile confrontation”.

Bypass decision

The MUD leadership now fears that the president will seek to bypass the assembly’s decision by having the decree powers confirmed by the country’s top court. Speaking after the vote, MUD leader Henry Ramos Allup warned that such a move by the president risked setting off a constitutional crisis. “I do not want it to come to that . . . this decision belongs to parliament,” he said after the vote.

Though owners of the world’s largest oil reserves, more and more Venezuelans are now forced to stand in long queues to buy increasingly scarce basics such as food and medicines.

According to analysts at the Econométrica consultancy in Caracas, despite receiving more than $1 trillion in oil revenues since Chávez launched his “Bolivarian” revolution in 1998, Venezuelan per capita income is roughly unchanged.

Venezuelan officials have been desperately trying to organise a meeting between Opec members and other leading oil producers to hammer out production cuts that would boost oil prices.