CARACAS (Dispatches) – The Venezuelan opposition on Friday dissolved the ‘interim government’ led by Juan Guaido, the face of a failed drive to oust democratically-elected President Nicolas Maduro.
The vote came in an online session of the opposition-controlled National Assembly, a body elected in 2015.
The tally was 72 in favor of dissolving the interim government, 29 against and eight abstentions.
Almost four years ago, in January 2019, Guaido was backed by the United States and the West.
Three of the four major Venezuelan opposition groups — Justice First, Democratic Action and A New Era — backed the ouster of Guaido as well as the creation of a five-member commission to manage the country’s foreign assets, especially U.S.-based refiner Citgo, a subsidiary of state-owned oil company PDVSA.
Guaido, whose Voluntad Popular party rejected the effort, had urged the lawmakers at the National Assembly to replace him instead of dissolving the “interim government.”
The decision was made within the framework of peace talks between the Maduro administration and the country’s opposition groups to promote national unity and advance the recovery of the Latin American state from years-long U.S.-imposed bans.
Back in November, Maduro’s administration and the country’s opposition reached a long-delayed “social protection agreement” aimed at easing the drawn-out political and humanitarian situation in the country, with the deal focusing on education, health, food security, flood response, and electricity programs.
Last year, the two sides held several rounds of negotiations with the mediation of Norway in Mexico, but practically it did not bring any favorable results.
The oil-rich Latin American country began going through a downward spiral of poverty as well as social and developmental stagnation in 2018, when the West, led by the U.S., and its favored Venezuelan opposition contested Maduro’s victory in the presidential election.
Following the election, Western countries began slapping Caracas with a slew of backbreaking sanctions, which have been responsible for spawning the dire economic situation in the country, with millions having fled Venezuela since the onset of the crisis.