Venezuela seeks to cool outrage over court power grab
By Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta | CARACAS
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Venezuela's pro-government Supreme Court revoked its takeover of the opposition-led Congress on Saturday after it drew international condemnation and protests against socialist President Nicolas Maduro.
"This controversy is over," Maduro said just after midnight at a specially convened state security committee.
The committee ordered the top court to reconsider Wednesday's court ruling, which effectively nullified the legislature and brought accusations the ruling Socialist Party was creating a dictatorship.
The tribunal duly erased two controversial judgments and its president, Maikel Moreno, met with both foreign envoys and journalists to explain the decision, insisting there had never been any intention to strip the National Assembly of its powers.
Maduro, 54, who had faced dissent even within government ranks over the Supreme Court's move, sought to cast developments as the achievement of a statesman resolving a power conflict beneath him. But foes said it was a hypocritical row-back by an unpopular government that overplayed its hand in a power grab.
"You can't pretend to just normalize the nation after carrying out a 'coup,'" said Julio Borges, leader of the legislature.
Borges publicly tore up the court rulings this week and refused to attend the overnight security committee, whose members include the heads of major institutions.
He led an open-air meeting of the National Assembly in a Caracas square on Saturday.
Having already shot down most congressional measures since the opposition won control in 2015, the Supreme Court went further with its Wednesday decision. It said it was taking over the legislature's role because it was in "contempt" of the law.
TEAR GAS AND PEPPER SPRAY
Although scores of dissidents have been detained during Maduro's four-year rule and the National Assembly stripped of power anyway in practice, the court's move was arguably the most explicitly anti-democratic measure.
