Venezuela: New assembly leader warns 'justice will come'

[Zorro]

Venezuela's controversial, newly elected legislative assembly had a fiery message as the body took office Friday: Supporters of leftist President Nicolás Maduro are in control, with a vengeance.

More than 530 members of the National Constituent Assembly, the new legislative panel with powers to rewrite the Venezuela Constitution after an election Sunday at Maduro's behest, took oaths of office Friday afternoon.

It was a moment that Maduro opponents hoped to derail -- they boycotted Sunday's election and demonstrated against it for weeks, saying the President orchestrated it to get around the existing National Assembly, which the opposition has controlled since 2015.

But the new assembly's leader, former Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez, warned the opposition that their reckoning is coming, blaming it for deaths that accompanied the protests and for waging "economic war" against the people.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/americas/venezuela-assembly-first-day/index.html

[Zorro]

1. Venezuela installs new all-powerful assembly rejected by U.S.

Defying the U.S. and international community, Venezuela installed a new legislative body Friday that will have virtually unlimited power to rewrite the South American nation’s constitution and eliminate the last remnants of its democracy.

Delegates to the new national constituent assembly, elected Sunday under suspected fraud, were sworn in early Friday afternoon during a pomp-filled ceremony inside the gold-domed legislative palace in downtown Caracas, the nation’s capital. All 545 delegates streamed into the building together, each holding a red flower. Socialist party leaders held portraits of the late President Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar.

“¡Viva Chávez!” they proclaimed after singing the national anthem.

Chosen to preside over the assembly was Delcy Rodríguez, a former foreign minister, who declared the legislative body “arrived to impose justice.”

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/americas/venezuela/article165446552.html