After Nicolás Maduro’s detention, Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice appointed Delcy Rodríguez as temporary President starting this Saturday.
Following the abduction of President Nicolás Maduro, who has already been flown to New York, during a “large-scale attack” in Caracas, a power vacuum has emerged, raising the issue of who rules Venezuela.
Vice President Delcy Rodríguez, a key member of the Venezuelan socialist revolution and close collaborator of Nicolás Maduro, will temporarily manage the administration as temporary president starting this Saturday, according to the Venezuelan Constitution.
After the Caracas bombings, the Supreme Court of Justice of Venezuela ruled that Rodríguez, as acting president, must exercise all powers, duties, and faculties of the Presidency to ensure administrative continuity and comprehensive defence of the nation.
What does the Venezuelan Constitution say about the ‘absolute absence’ of the president?
According to the Venezuelan Constitution, if this circumstance arises when the first four years of his six-year tenure have not yet expired, the vice president must assume the presidency.
This condition applies to Nicolás Maduro, who was caught in the ‘Absolute Resolution’ operation, when Hugo Chávez’s successor begins his third six-year tenure as president on January 10, 2024.
The Venezuelan Constitution also requires that a new presidential election be held within thirty days of the permanent absence of the head of the Executive branch. In Venezuela’s instance, this would occur during the first week of February.
Why could the arrest of Nicolás Maduro create a constitutional crisis in Venezuela?
However, the legal situation in Venezuela following Maduro’s unexpected exit, in which he was blindfolded and arrested by US forces, raises concerns about how the Constitution is interpreted.
The Constitution does not specifically define total absence due to arrest by another country’s Armed Forces, hence the Supreme Court’s involvement was required.
Venezuela’s top court is made up of justices who are largely former government officials.
There’s also no guarantee that the “interim president” is truly running the country. “We are going to govern that country (Venezuela) until we can have a safe, proper, and legal transition,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago mansion.
Maduro was deported from Venezuela following months of mounting pressure from Washington, in an operation that awoke Caracas residents early Saturday morning, January 3.
According to Trump, Delcy Rodríguez has already been sworn in as Venezuela’s president, after the constitutional transfer of power.
Delcy Rodríguez did not declare herself temporary president or discuss a political transition during her broadcast address hours before her appointment. The caption at the bottom of the screen identified her as vice president. She made no indication that she would collaborate with the United States.
“ The only president of Venezuela is President Nicolás Maduro,” Rodríguez declared, surrounded by high-ranking civilian officials and military leaders. “The extremists who have promoted this armed aggression against our country will be held accountable by history and justice. Of that we have no doubt,” she added.
This is Delcy Rodríguez’s trajectory in Chavismo
The vice president has a long career as a lawyer and politician, having served in a variety of capacities under both Maduro and his predecessor and mentor, the late President Hugo Chávez.
Rodríguez, who has been vice president since June 14, 2018, was nominated by Maduro as Minister of Hydrocarbons on August 27, 2024.
Rodríguez led over the National Constituent Assembly, established by Maduro in 2017 to replace the opposition-majority legislature elected in 2015.
The Constituent Assembly was established in August 2017 following four months of public protests between April and July of that year, which were crushed by security forces and the military and resulted in more than a hundred deaths, thousands of injuries, and several dozen detentions around the nation.
Rodríguez, the younger sister of the current president of the National Assembly, is the daughter of Jorge Antonio Rodríguez, a Venezuelan Marxist political leader and founder of the Socialist League, a group in which Nicolás Maduro was engaged as a child.
As a result of his role in the 1976 kidnapping of American William Niehous, chief of operations for Owens-Illinois in Venezuela, one of the world’s major glass container manufacturers, the vice president’s father was detained and perished in the hands of the then-politics police.
After being suspected by Venezuelan insurgents of being a CIA spy, Niehous was accidentally discovered by police hunting for cattle thieves in an agricultural region in the southeastern state of Bolívar almost three years later.
