Venezuela’s Supreme Court late on Saturday ordered Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez to become the country’s interim leader, after the United States seized President Nicolas Maduro and whisked him out of the country.
The high court ruled that Rodríguez “assume and exercise, in an acting capacity, all the attributes, duties and powers inherent to the office of President to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the nation.”
The court ruling said that Rodríguez will assume “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, in order to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defense of the Nation.”
The ruling added that the court will debate the matter in order to “determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defense of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic.”
Trump said Saturday that the US would run Venezuela until a leadership transition could be organised.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. “So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
Trump offered almost no details on how the US would “run” a sovereign nation when its vice-president, legislature and military were still in place and publicly opposing the US move. He said it would include deploying US oil companies to the country, though he indicated that his embargo “on all Venezuelan oil remains in full effect” and that US forces would stay on alert.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said.
A plane carrying Maduro landed just before 5pm local time at New York’s Stewart airport, from where he will be transported to New York City, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to identified.
Trump said the intervention in Venezuela would be done “with a group” largely comprised of senior US officials and with an emphasis on repairing oil infrastructure and making sure the people of Venezuela were “also taken care of.
