Socialists rejoin Venezuela legislature

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its allied factions will return to the National Assembly.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP) — Venezuela’s government said Monday its deputies will return to the opposition-controlled legislature, which they walked out of three years ago.

“In the interests of deepening and extending the dialogue… the United Socialist Party of Venezuela and its allied factions will return to the National Assembly,” said communications minister Jorge Rodriguez, hours after opposition leader Juan Guaido announced that reconciliation talks had broken down.

Deputies from the ruling socialist party walked out of the National Assembly in 2016 after losing control in elections, and the government set up its own body, the Constituent Assembly, to sideline the opposition-dominated body.

Guaido, the speaker of the National Assembly, earlier this year declared himself interim president with the backing of the United States and other western powers, saying elections that returned socialist leader Nicolas Maduro to power had been undermined by fraud.

The National Assembly has maintained its composition of 112 opposition lawmakers and 55 government loyalists, although a number of the opposition members have either been jailed, gone undercover to avoid arrest or fled the country.

On Sunday, Guaido said that talks aimed at resolving the country’s political crisis had ended, more than a month after Maduro broke off the Norwegian-mediated dialogue.

Maduro called off the talks, which were initially held in Oslo and then moved to Barbados, on 7 August in response to US sanctions against his government.

“Maduro has abandoned the negotiation process with misleading excuses,” Guaido said in a statement Sunday evening. “After more than 40 days during which he refused to continue, we can confirm that the Barbados (dialogue) mechanism has ended.”

Guaido has demanded that Maduro step down to clear the way for elections but Maduro has refused to budge, insisting sanctions be lifted and blaming the country’s spiral into economic and political chaos on a US-directed conspiracy.