Caracas, Venezuela, Apr 5, 2017 / 05:02 am
Shortly after Venezuela's supreme court revised its decision effectively stripping the legislature of its powers this weekend, one of the country's cardinals responded by calling the reversal a mere "cosmetic retouching."
Venezuela's Supreme Court, packed with supporters of president Nicolas Maduro, announced March 29 that it would assume the functions of the National Assembly, where the opposition holds a majority.
The move was denounced domestically and internationally as a coup and a blow to democracy. In the face of this criticism Maduro asked the court to revise its rulings, which it did April 1.
"The corrections to the rulings are cosmetic retouchings that do not resolve the situation in the least, because the measures that shut down the National Assembly as an autonomous power continue, and confound the population," Cardinal Baltazar Porras Cardozo of Merida responded April 2.